Cali: Muslim on trial for killing family of Hindu girlfriend who broke off relationship

D.A. to seek death in killings, burnings of family

SANTA ANA – The Orange County District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday that it will seek the death penalty against a Van Nuys man accused of murdering his ex-girlfriend’s father and sister and setting their bodies on fire.

Iftekhar Murtaza, 25, qualified for a potential death sentence when a judge found enough evidence at a preliminary hearing in January to require that he stand trial on two counts of first-degree murder, plus the special circumstances of committing multiple murder, murders during the commission of a burglary and kidnapping, and murders for financial gain.

He is also charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempting to murder his ex-girlfriend’s mother in May 2007.

Murtaza is being held without bail and is scheduled for a pretrial hearing on Friday in the Central Justice Center, Santa Ana.

Prosecutors will seek life in prison without the possibility of parole for Murtaza’s co-defendants, Vitaliy Krasnoperov, 24, of Hollywood, and Charles Anthony Murphy, Jr., 25, of Mission Hills.

All three men have pleaded not guilty.

District Attorney Tony Rackauckas decided to seek a death sentence for Murtaza after convening a special-circumstances committee of high-ranking prosecutors who reviewed Murtaza’s record, the nature of the crime, and listened to potential mitigating circumstances presented by the defense attorney.

Murtaza dated Shayona Dhanak for two years, even though her parents – father Jaypraykash Dhanak, 56, and mother Leela Dhanak, 54 – disapproved of the relationship in part because they were practicing Hindu and Murtaza was a nonpracticing Muslim.

Evidence presented during a preliminary hearing revealed that Murtaza orchestrated the plot to kill members of his ex-girlfriend’s family after her parents forced her to break up with him in March 2007, according to trial prosecutor Howard Gundy.

Shayona Dhanak, then 18, was living in the dorms as a freshman at the University of California, Irvine, on May 21, 2007 when two men entered the Dhanak’s home in Anaheim Hills and subdued, beat, stabbed and restrained Jaypraykash Dhanak, according to a news release from the Orange County District Attorney’s Office,

The intruders later detained Karishma Dhanak, Shayona’s 20-year-old sister, and Leela Dhanak when they returned home, according to prosecutors. The victims were beaten and stabbed and the home was set on fire before the men fled in a van with Jaypraykash and Karishma Dhanak.

Police officers responding to the fire found Leela Dhanak lying unconscious on a neighbor’s lawn. She had been stabbed, beaten and set on fire. She was rushed to a hospital with life-threatening injuries but recovered after three weeks in a coma and was able to identify her daughter’s ex-boyfriend as one the attackers.

“I recognized one guy. That was Murtaza,” she testified in January. “Murtaza put a knife underneath my chin.”

Jaypraykash and Karishma Dhanak were taken to a bike trail at Mason Regional Park in Irvine – not far from UCI – where they were murdered and their bodies were set on fire.

Murtaza then allegedly fled from Orange County to Phoenix, Ariz., and attempted to flee to India with a one-way plane ticket and $11,000 in cash, according to the news release. He was arrested attempting to board a flight to India and was later extradited back to Orange County.

“His motivation was to kill everyone in (Shayona’s) immediate family so she would have no one but him and that he could keep her,” Gundy said in January.

More via Woman whose family burned: Ex was often violent | murtaza, dhana – News – The Orange County Register.

SANTA ANA – A college student whose father and sister were beaten, stabbed and set on fire in 2007 testified Tuesday that she had a contentious two-year, on-again, off-again romantic relationship with a West Hollywood man who was later accused of murdering her family after she broke up with him a final time in March 2007.

Shayona Dhanak, 22, told a Superior Court jury here that she dated Iftekhar Murtaza, now 25, despite her parent’s objections, and even though he was often violent, possessive, manipulative and suffocating. She said Murtaza punched out two of her male friends, once threw her down on a bed, and would frequently show up at parties uninvited because he knew she would be there.

Shayona Dhanak testified Tuesday that her parents did not like Murtaza in part because they were devout Hindus and he was a Muslim, but also because “they didn’t like the vibes he gave out” and because they felt he didn’t look like an honest man.