Spurned lover’s revenge on cheating husband and his wife ends in home detention for false allegations

• He ended a 15-month affair – and then his lover told police he threatened to kill her.
• Evidence police relied on turned out to be messages from a fake social media account.
• Man and his wife spent several days in prison before police realised they had been conned by story of fake home invasion and sex assault.

A cheating husband and his wife were jailed for weeks after his spurned lover told police the couple had broken into her home and assaulted and sexually violated her using spices and rocks.

The actions of the spurned lover, Famiza Sahib, who also uses the surnames Zayan and Begg, were described in court this week as one of the worst cases of attempting to pervert the course of justice ever seen in New Zealand.

But Sahib has escaped with a sentence of 11 months home detention, despite the Crown seeking a prison term, after a judge concluded it was not in society’s interests to send her to prison because she is the sole caregiver for a high-needs son.

At her sentencing on Thursday, the court heard how her escalating series of false allegations culminated in her claiming the husband and wife had burst into her home and thrown spice into her face before sexually assaulting her with rocks.

To support her story, she went to a doctor who recovered rocks from the fictitious assault from her vagina. But the man, wary of her ongoing false claims, had installed CCTV at his home and was able to prove he and his wife were at home at the time and could not have been responsible for the supposed crimes.

The husband, subject to the bulk of the false claims after he ended their affair, told the Herald of the harrowing impact of being imprisoned following the false accusations.

“I was very scared. I never want to go there again,” said the man on being sent to Mt Eden prison.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen when I went in or if I was going to get out again.

Sahib had mirrored the man’s actual Facebook account, creating a fresh account which she then used to generate false messages using the Messenger application.

She then took the message trail to police, claiming it showed her former lover had threatened to kill her and - eventually - that he and his wife together had carried out a horrendous sexual assault.

Famiza Sahib, also known as Famiza Zayan and Famiza Begg, was sentenced to home detention at the Manukau District Court after an elaborate scheme tricked cops into arresting her former married lover and his wife.

Police believed her, arresting her former lover on four occasions and his wife on three occasions after Sahib kept producing further messages containing manufactured evidence of new crimes by using the fictitious Facebook account.

The man has spoken to the Herald of the weeks during which he repeatedly told police of his and his wife’s innocence - and how those claims were cast aside as police pinned their belief on the false trail of messages. Both husband and wife were granted permanent name suppression at Sahib’s sentencing.

The man met Sahib through a shop he runs at which she was a regular customer. Friendly banter became personal and the pair started an affair around March 2021.

The man said the affair was “the biggest mistake of my life” - one he broke off in May the following year after his teen daughter saw messages on his phone and confronted him.

That day – May 9, 2022 – quickly spiralled out of control with photographs of the man and Sahib sent by message to his brother-in-law from what appeared to be his own Facebook account.

The man said that led to his admission to his wife before calling Sahib in his wife’s presence to tell her – again – their relationship was over.

At that point, a stream of abusive messages targeted himself and his wife.

The messages were so distressing the couple called police who, they say, advised they shutdown their Facebook accounts and issue Sahib with a trespass notice. The man said police also gave an assurance Sahib would be spoken to.

Instead, as the phone messages to him and his wife continued, photographs of the man and Sahib together began to be posted on the internet.

When police were called

On May 10, Sahib visited the man’s shop where he presented her with the trespass notice. While there, he said she grabbed his phone and threw it to the road – and then called the police on her own phone when he pushed past to recover it.

Both parties called the police.

The man was issued with a Police Safety Order, a legal order that bars the recipient from any contact with an individual, or the place that person lives or works.

It was the alleged breach of that which led to the man’s first arrest and stay in police custody. The evidence was copies of Messenger exchanges provided by Sahib which appeared to be between him and her.

Among the messages she claimed he had sent was one that said: “Come on bitch, come to my shop… waiting for you with the knife which I told you about this morning.”

One of the phone messages a woman presented to police, claiming it was from her married lover.

Another said: “You have told everything to my wife about our affair now… I got the knife to cut u into pieces and I will throw your body where no one will ever be able to find [it].”

The man first appeared in court on May 11, apparently in breach of the order, then again three days later when he faced further charges which included threatening to kill Sahib.

“I explained to them this is not me. This is my photo but I didn’t make any contact or send any messages to her. I was very scared, very upset… angry at the time. They said ‘we have the proof’ – they thought I was lying.”

“Then she kept making different profiles and posts,” he said, as photographs of the two were posted to community Facebook pages and alerted to people who knew him.

According to the summary of facts read in court, Sahib continued to contact police to report threatening messages she was supposedly receiving from the man.

A few weeks passed during which the man hired a lawyer, a private investigator and a computer expert who were tasked with proving a negative – that the man did not send the messages. The man handed to police all the phones in the couple’s home and provided passwords to his accounts.

“All the evidence we gave police from the investigation – they did not even look at it.”

And then came the third arrest, this time claiming the man and his wife had sexually assaulted Sahib by holding her down and shoving stones into her vagina.

The Herald has copies of the police case against the couple in which prosecutors alleged they had worked together to subdue another person in the house with Sahib with a powder that restricted breathing and vision.

There was also medical evidence of “rocks” being recovered from her vagina.

At Sahib’s sentencing, Judge Richard McIlraith said she had told police the couple had thrown powder into her face before inserting rocks and spices into her vagina. They were charged with sexual violation and burglary on the basis of the false allegation.

It was this allegation that led to the man and his wife each spending six nights in prison, an experience he described as terrifying for both.

“Being arrested at home, in front of my dad and my children, that was the worst. If police come to take someone away, I always think they must have done something. Even my friends, they thought ‘he’s done something and he’s hiding it’.”

By now, though, the man had devised a plan to prove he wasn’t acting against Sahib – installing cameras everywhere at the family home.

“We had cameras inside the house and outside the house, in the hallway, in the bedrooms… to prove I was there, that I wasn’t on a phone.

“That’s how I got evidence we weren’t at Famiza’s house when the sexual assault took place because we were sitting in front of the camera in our lounge.”

Investigating because police did not

Not only was that provided to police, but the man’s lawyer Aaron Kashyap, was able to track down a neighbour of Sahib whose CCTV was able to show no movements around her house on the day of the alleged attack.

“The police weren’t listening so we had to do everything for them,” the man said.

Kashyap had already raised concerns with police after the first two arrests, highlighting what he believed were paths of investigations that would quickly clear his client.

“My client is innocent of all the charges,” he wrote. “Defence is confident that on a thorough investigation of this matter, the police will have little alternative other than to offer no evidence against my client.”

That was on May 22, before the man and his wife spent six nights in prison and well before police carried out an investigation into Sahib.

Famiza Sahib confers with her lawyer Sanjay Kumar (left) outside the Manukau District Court following her sentencing on December 19, 2024, for wilfully attempting to pervert the course of justice. Photo / George Block

By the time detectives did make inquiries, the man said he had spent $150,000 on experts, investigators, lawyers – and the cameras which eventually proved his and his wife’s innocence.

At Sahib’s sentencing, a prosecutor said police had obtained footage from the victims’ home and from properties neighbouring Sahib’s showing the assault could not have happened because the couple were at home the entire evening in question, and no one had arrived at the supposed victim’s home.

Weeks after the prison stay, a detective met with the man to tell him what he already knew – that the evidence against him was false.

“It was a relief. It was a relief she was arrested. I’m still scared, still having sleepless nights, still thinking about jail. I think my wife is more traumatised than I am – she still sees the police and gets scared.

“I never in my life imagined we would go into prison, that we would be arrested.”

The last arrest saw the couple kept in separate holding rooms before appearing in court and being sent to prison. He could hear his wife sobbing through the wall. “She just kept crying. It was heart-breaking.”

The man said he wanted police to apologise. He said he could understand officers moving quickly on the first arrest given what they were presented with.

However, he said police should have investigated further and that would have stopped the other arrests and the costs piling up. Police this week said they were unable to comment because aspects of the legal case were not yet finalised.

Spared prison by disabled son

Sahib appeared for sentence in the Manukau District Court on Thursday, the same courthouse where the husband and wife appeared before they were locked up following her slew of false claims.

Auckland barrister Michael Thomas, acting for the Manukau Crown Solicitor, told Judge McIlraith the Crown had been unable to find a comparable case involving such an egregious attempt to pervert the course of justice.

“To be frank the Crown hasn’t been able to find in the authorities a case as severe as this,” Thomas said.

Sahib had admitted a single representative charge of wilfully attempting to pervert the course of justice on the eve of her trial.

The charge carries a maximum possible prison term of seven years.

Thomas sought a start point of four to four-and-a-half years in prison and his submissions included proposed discounts that would have kept the final sentence above two years, meaning home detention would not have been an option.

He said Sahib showed a high level of premeditation because she created false Facebook profiles before staging a home invasion and sexual assault.

“This offending strikes at the heart of the administration of justice including the integrity of the criminal justice process,” Thomas said.

Judge McIlraith agreed.

“In my view it’s extremely serious offending,” he said.

However, the judge said the “elephant in the room” was the fact Sahib was the sole caregiver for her challenged son, and questioned whether it was in society’s best interest for the boy to lose his mother and face going into care.

Her lawyer Sanjay Kumar sought a discharge without conviction at the start of the sentencing.

Kumar argued a conviction for what he described as her “passion-driven offending” could jeopardise her ability to travel to India to seek care for her son, and risk her future employment prospects.

Judge McIlraith declined the application, saying the travel argument was speculative and the consequences on her employment were the natural outcome of her “vindictive” and extremely serious offending.

Kumar sought a starting point of 30 months in prison with discounts for the guilty plea avoiding the need for a two-week trial, and for her previous good character, taking the final term within the range where a community-based sentence is available.

The judge said there was undoubtedly a significant degree of premeditation during Sahib’s gradual and deliberate escalation of false claims culminating in the staged home invasion and sexual assault.

Her actions had caused significant harm to the husband and wife, and their business, and they had spent nine and seven days in custody respectively, Judge McIlraith said.

“I’d like you to reflect on that. How would you feel if that happened to you?”

Further aggravating factors cited by the judge included her never stepping back, until the late guilty plea, from her false complaints.

He adopted a starting point of three-and-a-half years before applying discounts for her previous good character and personal circumstances, taking the end sentence to just under the 24-month threshold where home detention is available.

Judge McIlraith said if it was not for the fact she was the sole caregiver for her high-needs son, she would be heading to prison. However, it was not in society’s best interests to leave the boy without a mother, he said.

Home detention sentences are automatically converted to half the final prison term, because people sentenced to short prison terms are automatically paroled after serving half the time.

Sahib was sentenced to 11 months' home detention.

A separate account of days in custody from a detective later involved in the case said the man and his wife had spent 23 days in custody.

Sahib told the Herald she was in a severe depression at the time she began the relationship with the man, who she believed was single.

“One morning he is calling me saying, ‘oh my Lord, she has seen the messages on my phone - I need to end this’.”

Sahib said she had pleaded guilty to put an end to a long-running legal process. When questioned on the incidents over which she was convicted - and the contrived evidence - she said she would not speak further without her lawyer.

David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for 35 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.

George Block is an Auckland-based reporter with a focus on police, the courts, prisons and defence. He joined the Herald in 2022 and has previously worked at Stuff in Auckland and the Otago Daily Times in Dunedin.