A Family Shattered: The Unanswered Questions Behind a Chatsworth Tragedy

A Family Shattered: The Unanswered Questions Behind a Chatsworth Tragedy

A quiet Sunday evening in Montford, Chatsworth, was shattered by a nightmare that ended with two parents dead and two young boys fighting for their lives in a hospital. What began as an ordinary family day ended in an unspeakable tragedy that has left a community reeling and a family searching for answers that may never come.

The details are horrifying. Forty-year-old Zaheera ‘Sholene’ Rehman was stabbed six times in the chest during a violent altercation with her estranged husband, 35-year-old Muhammed Rehman. But the violence didn’t stop there. In a frenzied attack, Rehman also turned on the childrenstabbing Zaheera’s 12-year-old son from a previous marriage twice and slashing the wrists of their own nine-year-old son.

Zaheera succumbed to her injuries on the operating table in the early hours of Monday morning. The children survived and are now recovering in the hospital, physically healing from wounds that will undoubtedly leave deeper, invisible scars.

A Brother’s Baffling Grief

The story becomes even more perplexing through the eyes of Muhammed’s brother, Althaaf Rehman, who lives in the same yard. He paints a picture of a man who was, until that day, a “full-time dad who cooked and cleaned for his children.”

Speaking to the press, a bewildered Althaaf recounted the moment the horror spilled onto his doorstep. “My brother’s youngest son ran to my gate. He was bleeding from his hands. I thought he had been attacked by an intruder. I never imagined that my brother would have inflicted harm on them.”

He rushed the hysterical, bleeding boys to the hospital, only learning during the car ride that their father was the assailant and that their mother was also stabbed inside the home. A neighbour later found Zaheera in a pool of blood.

The next morning, the grim story concluded when Muhammed Rehman was found hanged from a tree in a park at Arena Park.

A Community Leader’s Stern Rebuke

While the family struggles to reconcile the man they knew with the monster he became that night, community leaders are refusing to mince words. Moulana Mohamed Tariq, spokesperson for the Sunni Jamiat Ulama and a member of the Chatsworth Spiritual Crime Prevention Forum, condemned the act in the strongest terms.

“The father’s intent was to kill the mother and the children. We cannot accept this,” Tariq stated. “Whatever happened, nobody deserves to die that way… As a religious sector, we cannot be silenced about this.”

Tariq highlighted the incident as a brutal reminder of the continuous rise in gender-based violence (GBV) cases, calling for collective action from law enforcement, religious leaders, and the community to support victims and build a more compassionate society.

The Long Road Ahead

For now, the two boys are in the care of their uncle, Althaaf, who has vowed to raise them as his own. “I will be taking full responsibility for them and will do my best to support them for as long as I am alive,” he said.

They were discharged from the hospital for their parents’ joint funeral on Monday a devastatingly sombre affair for children so young before returning to continue their treatment.

The family pleads for privacy and an end to social media speculation, clinging to the memory of the couple as loving parents while a community is left to grapple with the chilling reality that the most devastating violence often happens behind closed doors, without warning, and forever alters the lives of the innocent.

{Source: IOL}

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