Fawziyah Javed was 17 weeks pregnant when her husband killed her. Her mother tells Radio Times why she wanted his murder trial shown on TV.
Fawziyah Javed was 17 weeks pregnant with her first child when she was murdered on 2 September 2021. A “beautiful soul” with a contagious laugh, the lawyer was pushed off Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh by her husband two days before her 32nd birthday and fell 50ft to her death.
Today, her mother Yasmin is broken by the death of her only child. The notion that the passing of time could one day soften her pain is proving cruel and false.
“It’s getting harder and harder,” she says, tears falling.
Talking about Fawziyah is difficult, but Yasmin wants to tell her daughter’s story to highlight the blight of domestic violence, hidden behind so many front doors across Britain.
“If I can tell people how much this has destroyed me and my family’s life, his actions – it can make a difference,” she says. “If it can happen to Fawziyah, it can happen to anyone.”
Fawziyah “was very clever, very articulate, independent and strong. She knew her rights as a woman.” And, Yasmin adds: “She helped convict him.”
Shortly before she died among gorse bushes on the Edinburgh beauty spot while on a mini-break with her husband, Kashif Anwar, Fawziyah told a female police officer what had happened.
“He pushed me,” she said, because she’d tried to end her relationship with him. In pain, with multiple injuries, she asked whether she was going to die, whether her baby was going to die, and why Anwar had treated her the way that he did.
Anwar, 29, an optical assistant from Pudsey near Leeds, claimed he had slipped and bumped into his wife after taking a selfie, causing her to fall, but in April 2023 he was found guilty of murdering Fawziyah and causing the death of her unborn child. His trial at the High Court in Edinburgh was filmed, with Fawziyah’s family’s support, for Channel 4’s two-part documentary, The Push: Murder on the Cliff.
Despite Anwar being sentenced to a minimum of 20 years behind bars, Yasmin says it’s her family in Leeds who are serving the real life sentence.
“He’s in prison, but he’s still alive. He’s living, breathing and allowed phone calls and visitors. We’re the ones with the real life sentence. We’ll be in pain and grief and in darkness until our last breath.”
Anwar’s abusive nature wasn’t obvious at first. He and Fawziyah first met when she accompanied her mother to an appointment to buy new glasses. Their relationship began after they met each other again, and Anwar told her she was the kind of woman he wanted to marry – which they did on Christmas Day 2020. He came across as “very charming, very charismatic, polite and well-mannered,” says Yasmin, but “he was a Jekyll-and-Hyde character”. Anwar soon became possessive, abusive and hot-tempered.
Fawziyah collected evidence of her husband’s coercive and controlling behaviour, which formed the pillar of the prosecution case at the trial. It was revealed that she’d told police that Anwar held a pillow over her face and punched it repeatedly, and on another occasion had knocked her unconscious in a graveyard.
In one call, at Ramadan, which she recorded while staying at her mother’s house, he told his wife: “You’re a disease in everyone’s life, the sooner you’re dead, the sooner you’re out of my life, it’ll be better.”
On average, two women a week are killed by a current or former partner in England and Wales, according to the charity Refuge. One in four women will be impacted by domestic abuse and leaving can be the most dangerous time for a victim of domestic violence. For Yasmin, it is “heart-wrenching” every time she hears of a woman murdered by a partner or ex-partner.
“It’s not just her life that is taken; many, many lives are taken and destroyed.”
In The Push, Fawziyah’s magnetic personality shines through. The documentary plays footage from her phone, showing the 31-year-old laughing, beaming. Rightly, it doesn’t focus on Anwar, who declined to take the stand at his trial and who, the judge said in his sentencing statement, had showed no remorse.
Fawziyah was a solicitor working in employment law, but she also mentored vulnerable children and helped the homeless. In a short space of time, she gave so much.
“Can you imagine if she had been allowed to live, how much she would have done?” says Yasmin.
In Edinburgh, Fawziyah was buying time and planning to return to her parents’ home, where she would raise her child, her mother says. But when Yasmin messaged her daughter on 2 September 2021, there was no reply. At 5am the next day, police knocked on her door to tell her that her daughter had died.
With her only child and unborn grandchild taken from her, Yasmin says she doesn’t have a life.
“I’m just existing. I’m in pain every single waking second of the day. If I’m really honest, I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. But I can’t go down that road. I have to keep pushing through. It’s just about pushing through time.
“She was everything: our life, our heartbeat, the glue that kept the family together. She was the centre of our world. My only child. She was more than a daughter. She was my best friend.”
The Push: Murder on the Cliff airs on Channel 4 on Sunday 3rd March and Monday 4th March at 9pm.
Looking for something else to watch? Check out more of our Documentaries coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to see what’s on tonight.
Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10 – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.