Latest / Crime Night / The Three Concrete Walls: Rahma's Confession, Child Abandonment, and the Legal Obliteration That Led to Murder
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Okay, picture this. It's late two thousand and eight. Imagine
- 0:03Speaker 1: walking into a police station. You know, the usual quiet hum,
- 0:07Speaker 1: maybe a keyboard clacking, a phone ringing somewhere down the hall.
- 0:11Speaker 1: Then the main door opens and everyone just stops. There's
- 0:14Speaker 1: a young woman standing there. She's only eighteen, but she
- 0:17Speaker 1: looks well. She looks like she's walked through hell and
- 0:20Speaker 1: barely made it out. Completely disoriented.
- 0:22Speaker 2: Broken, Yeah, but not hysterical, right, that's what's she shattered, absolutely,
- 0:26Speaker 2: But there's this strange, almost numb resolution about her. She
- 0:31Speaker 2: doesn't wait, doesn't ask for just any officer. She demands
- 0:34Speaker 2: to see the chief of investigations right away.
- 0:37Speaker 1: And when she finally gets to him, there's no story,
- 0:39Speaker 1: no explanation. First, just a statement, flat devastating. She says,
- 0:44Speaker 1: I have killed my son.
- 0:45Speaker 2: Wow. And that confession, I mean, that's the starting point
- 0:48Speaker 2: for everything that follows, isn't it. It kicks off this
- 0:50Speaker 2: frantic investigation, and it's the entry point for our deep
- 0:53Speaker 2: dive today. We're looking at the life. They're really tragic
- 0:55Speaker 2: life and the crime of this young woman. Rama.
- 0:58Speaker 1: But this isn't just about, you know, the crime itself.
- 1:01Speaker 1: It feels like it's about how everything around her just failed.
- 1:04Speaker 1: She actually described it herself, didn't she feeling like she
- 1:06Speaker 1: was facing three walls of concrete, a heat of sod exactly.
- 1:10Speaker 2: And that's our mission here to understand how those walls
- 1:13Speaker 2: got built around her, brick by brick. It's incredibly complex
- 1:17Speaker 2: because you have this final act, the killing, which seems
- 1:21Speaker 2: utterly devoid of motherly feeling on the surface. But when
- 1:25Speaker 2: you dig into why the motivation seemed to stem from
- 1:28Speaker 2: this incredibly twisted, desperate attempt to actually relieve her son's suffering,
- 1:33Speaker 2: it's a terrible.
- 1:34Speaker 1: Paradox, a paradox born from total desperation. Okay, So to
- 1:37Speaker 1: understand the walls, we need to go back right back
- 1:39Speaker 1: before the crime.
- 1:40Speaker 2: Yeah, we need to rewind about four years, back to
- 1:42Speaker 2: two thousand and four. Rams fourteen years old, living in
- 1:44Speaker 2: the Haram area and her father. He's really the center
- 1:48Speaker 2: of her world then, a simple worker, maybe not wealthy,
- 1:51Speaker 2: but he provides stability and critically, he supports her education,
- 1:55Speaker 2: wants her to learn. He's her rock.
- 1:57Speaker 1: Okay, So you have that stability from the father, but
- 1:59Speaker 1: the vers paint a very different picture of.
- 2:01Speaker 2: The mother, Oh, completely different. The mother is thirty eight
- 2:04Speaker 2: at this time, and she's described as well, entirely self absorbed,
- 2:08Speaker 2: focused on her own comfort. There's this huge emotional distance
- 2:12Speaker 2: from Rama, like an indifference. It just hangs in the air,
- 2:15Speaker 2: and that that foreshadows so.
- 2:17Speaker 1: Much that fragile stability just gets shattered.
- 2:19Speaker 2: Then completely obliterated. In two thousand and seven, Rama's seventeen.
- 2:23Speaker 2: Her father dies suddenly, no warning. And it's not just
- 2:27Speaker 2: the emotional devastation, which must have been immense, it's also
- 2:30Speaker 2: boom her financial security, her only real family support system
- 2:34Speaker 2: gone instantly.
- 2:36Speaker 1: And the mother's reaction really tells.
- 2:37Speaker 2: You everything it does. Within six months, she makes two decisions,
- 2:40Speaker 2: both brutal for Rama. First, Rama has to quit school.
- 2:43Speaker 2: The mother says she can't afford it. Second, the mother
- 2:45Speaker 2: remarries very quickly, clearly for her own financial.
- 2:48Speaker 1: Security, and Rama doesn't fit into that new picture.
- 2:51Speaker 2: Not at all. The mother basically tells her new husband
- 2:53Speaker 2: she'll get rid of her daughter. She tells Rama, who's
- 2:56Speaker 2: still just seventeen, you don't belong here anymore. Check in.
- 2:59Speaker 2: Sometimes maybe Rama is just stunned, silent, basically thrown out
- 3:04Speaker 2: onto the street.
- 3:04Speaker 1: So she's forced to build her own life at seventeen, Yeah.
- 3:08Speaker 2: Late two thousand and seven, she has to find a way.
- 3:11Speaker 2: She gets a job in a clothing store, starts saving
- 3:13Speaker 2: every penny she can, manages to rent a tiny room.
- 3:16Speaker 2: She becomes fiercely independent, you know. Her boss respects her,
- 3:19Speaker 2: says she's sharp, honest, but she's utterly alone. Her mother
- 3:24Speaker 2: lives nearby, but might as well be on another planet,
- 3:26Speaker 2: just indifferent.
- 3:28Speaker 1: So that's the first wall, isn't it the foundation built
- 3:31Speaker 1: by her own mother. Total abandonment.
- 3:33Speaker 2: Absolutely, It's not just one betrayal, it's the complete failure
- 3:35Speaker 2: of the family structure, systemic abandonment. So Rama starts two
- 3:39Speaker 2: thousand and eight. She's just turned eighteen. She's still holding
- 3:42Speaker 2: onto that dream of education, working hard, trying to save.
- 3:45Speaker 2: She decides she needs a second job to make it
- 3:47Speaker 2: happen faster.
- 3:48Speaker 1: And that search for a better future leads her straight
- 3:50Speaker 1: into danger.
- 3:51Speaker 2: Directly into the path of the second wall. This one
- 3:54Speaker 2: has a name Whosain. He's a neighbor, a mechanic much older, forty,
- 3:59Speaker 2: married his own family. He starts hanging around her shop
- 4:02Speaker 2: a lot. Makes it pretty clear he's interested in well,
- 4:05Speaker 2: something inappropriate.
- 4:06Speaker 1: But she wasn't interested, not at all.
- 4:08Speaker 2: She rebuffs him, so he changes tactics. He sees her
- 4:11Speaker 2: vulnerability or need for money, maybe her trust in older
- 4:14Speaker 2: figures because she lost her dad. So he spends this story,
- 4:18Speaker 2: says his wife needs help at home, just for a
- 4:20Speaker 2: few extra hours and he'll pay her well.
- 4:23Speaker 1: And needing the money, trusting his age, she agrees.
- 4:26Speaker 2: She agrees. Two weeks later, the trap is sprung. She
- 4:29Speaker 2: goes Hussain's house. He's alone, says his wife just popped
- 4:33Speaker 2: out for an errand maybe thirty minutes, offers her some juice.
- 4:36Speaker 1: Oh no, don't tell me.
- 4:38Speaker 2: Yeah, the juice was drugged heavily. She blacks out, wakes
- 4:42Speaker 2: up maybe an hour later, realizes she's been assaulted, and
- 4:46Speaker 2: the sheer nerve of this guy who's say is just
- 4:48Speaker 2: sitting there drinking tea, smoking some cigarette.
- 4:51Speaker 1: Casually, casually after what he did.
- 4:54Speaker 2: And then he tries to smooth it over, tells her
- 4:56Speaker 2: he loves her, actually offers her this this customary marriage
- 5:00Speaker 2: that's a wage. Roofee says it's to cover her, protect
- 5:03Speaker 2: her reputation.
- 5:04Speaker 1: Okay, hang on, this is zawage. Iurfy. We need to
- 5:06Speaker 1: understand what that actually means for her in that moment
- 5:08Speaker 1: it sounds helpful maybe, but is it not really.
- 5:11Speaker 2: That's the crucial part. Assage Irfy is, Well, it's basically
- 5:15Speaker 2: a private agreement undocumented by the state. He needs a
- 5:19Speaker 2: couple of witnesses, maybe write it on a piece of paper,
- 5:21Speaker 2: but there's no official registration. It offers almost zero legal protection,
- 5:25Speaker 2: especially for the woman, but it provides a kind of
- 5:28Speaker 2: quick cultural fig leaf for sex outside of formal marriage.
- 5:33Speaker 1: So for he's saying, it's just a way to avoid.
- 5:35Speaker 2: Trouble, exactly, cheap insurance against a scandal. For Rama, though,
- 5:40Speaker 2: it's this flimsy piece of paper, an illusion of having
- 5:43Speaker 2: her honor restored maybe, but legally it traps her even more.
- 5:48Speaker 2: It's temporary, offers no real security.
- 5:50Speaker 1: She later finds out his wife wasn't even just out
- 5:52Speaker 1: on an errand right.
- 5:53Speaker 2: His wife was actually visiting family out of town, and
- 5:56Speaker 2: she had specifically told Hussein not to ask Rama to
- 5:58Speaker 2: come over while she was gone. He lied about everything.
- 6:01Speaker 1: So Rama's assaulted, manipulated into this fake marriage. What does
- 6:04Speaker 1: she do? Does she tell her mother?
- 6:06Speaker 2: She does? She goes to her mother, hoping for but
- 6:09Speaker 2: you'd hope for support right an ally, But the mother
- 6:12Speaker 2: just reinforces the first wall, dismisses the assault entirely tells
- 6:16Speaker 2: Rama she should be thankful WhoSay covered her with the
- 6:18Speaker 2: Zawa Jerfy.
- 6:19Speaker 1: Thankful unbelievable, So the mother basically sides with the.
- 6:22Speaker 2: Attacker pretty much. It confirms Rama is absolutely totally alone,
- 6:27Speaker 2: no family protection whatsoever. That first wall, the rejection, it's
- 6:31Speaker 2: solid concrete now, so.
- 6:33Speaker 1: She's trapped, social pressure, no family support. She agrees to
- 6:37Speaker 1: this Zawa Jerfy who saying, rents an apartment for her nearby.
- 6:41Speaker 2: Yes, the marriage is just that piece of paper the
- 6:43Speaker 2: two witnesses. Yeah, a way to quiet things down. But
- 6:46Speaker 2: then about four months into this arrangement, Rama realizes she's pregnant.
- 6:51Speaker 1: And Hussein's reaction this is where.
- 6:52Speaker 2: The second wall really starts to go up, the wall
- 6:54Speaker 2: of abandonment, public shame. When he finds out she's pregnant,
- 6:58Speaker 2: any pretensive care just vanishes. He denies it's his loudly publicly.
- 7:03Speaker 2: They end up fighting in the street. He's determined to
- 7:05Speaker 2: cut all ties, take zero responsibility.
- 7:07Speaker 1: And then something unexpected happens. His actual wife gets involved.
- 7:11Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a strange twist. His legal wife shows up
- 7:14Speaker 2: during this public fight. She sees Rama believes her story
- 7:17Speaker 2: about her husband. She actually tends to Rama's injuries from
- 7:20Speaker 2: the fight, and she demands Hussein make the marriage official,
- 7:24Speaker 2: register it properly, tells him she knows he's.
- 7:26Speaker 1: Capable of this, so a moment of maybe justice a.
- 7:31Speaker 2: Way out, you'd think so, but no, Husain completely rejects it.
- 7:35Speaker 2: He literally tears up the zawaj Arfy contract, throws it away.
- 7:39Speaker 2: He throws Rama out of the apartment he rented, tells
- 7:41Speaker 2: her to get rid of the baby any way she can.
- 7:43Speaker 2: He's done. The flimsy cover is.
- 7:45Speaker 1: Gone, so she's pregnant, almost again, publicly shamed. Standing completely alone.
- 7:50Speaker 2: And immediately, like right after being thrown out, she runs
- 7:53Speaker 2: into someone else. The third wall appears almost instantly, a
- 7:56Speaker 2: man named Sovie. He's older, around fifty, a butcher known
- 7:59Speaker 2: to be quite wealthy, and crucially, he knows her story.
- 8:03Speaker 1: Okay, is he offering help?
- 8:05Speaker 2: He makes an offer that sounds like salvation. He says
- 8:07Speaker 2: he'll marry her officially registered marriage, and he promises to
- 8:12Speaker 2: register the baby when it's born under his name, give
- 8:15Speaker 2: it legal status.
- 8:16Speaker 1: That sounds almost too good to be true given everything.
- 8:19Speaker 1: Is there a catch?
- 8:20Speaker 2: Oh, there's a catch, a big one. The condition is
- 8:22Speaker 2: basically servitude. She has to live with him, yes, but
- 8:25Speaker 2: as his servant, essentially cater to his needs.
- 8:28Speaker 1: And let me guess, her mother suddenly reappears like clockwork.
- 8:33Speaker 2: The very next day. The mother shows up. Not to
- 8:36Speaker 2: offer support, of course, she's there to congratulate Rama. Why.
- 8:41Speaker 2: Because Rama has landed a wealthy official husband in Soby.
- 8:45Speaker 2: The mother sees a potential source of income for herself.
- 8:48Speaker 2: She's celebrating her daughter entering this. This state of servitude
- 8:52Speaker 2: is just awful.
- 8:52Speaker 1: So Rama accepts Soby's offer, she has the baby. Five
- 8:55Speaker 1: months later, a boy does Soby keep his promise.
- 9:00Speaker 2: The moment the baby is born, so Be completely reneges
- 9:02Speaker 2: on the most critical part of the deal. He flat
- 9:05Speaker 2: out refuses to register the child under his name.
- 9:07Speaker 1: No, so the baby has no legal father exactly.
- 9:10Speaker 2: And this failure it's not just another personal betrayal. This
- 9:13Speaker 2: is the final wall clicking in a place, the wall
- 9:15Speaker 2: of legal obliteration. Because without a legally recognized father, Rama
- 9:19Speaker 2: cannot get a birth certificate for her son.
- 9:21Speaker 1: Why is that single document so crucial? I mean it's paperwork, right,
- 9:25Speaker 1: but it sounds like it was everything here it is everything.
- 9:27Speaker 2: It's the absolute key to existence in the eyes of
- 9:29Speaker 2: the state, the system, and the immediate devastating consequence. The
- 9:34Speaker 2: local health office refuses to give the baby as vaccinations,
- 9:37Speaker 2: polio shots, the vital early ones. They tell her point flank,
- 9:41Speaker 2: no official birth certificate, no medical care. It's mandatory.
- 9:45Speaker 1: So the child is legally invisible and medically vulnerable.
- 9:49Speaker 2: Completely, and Rama is now caught in this impossible lupi
- 9:52Speaker 2: mentioned earlier. She tries everything. One she goes back to
- 9:55Speaker 2: saying the biological father begs him, FLEs with him, just
- 9:59Speaker 2: register the child's we can get medical help. He physically
- 10:01Speaker 2: throws her out violently. Two she appeals to Soby, her
- 10:05Speaker 2: official husband. He says, fine, she can stay in his house,
- 10:07Speaker 2: live there, but the child unregistered, no concern of his.
- 10:11Speaker 2: Three she calls her mother, her last resort. The mother
- 10:14Speaker 2: tells her, it's your problem, handle it yourself, wow.
- 10:17Speaker 1: Just shut down at every single.
- 10:18Speaker 2: Turn, every single turn. So for six months after the birth,
- 10:22Speaker 2: Rama is living in Sobey's house, but she's standing right
- 10:25Speaker 2: in front of that heta sod those three concrete walls.
- 10:28Speaker 2: Wall one, her mother's total rejection, Wall two, who seems
- 10:33Speaker 2: predatory abuse and abandonment Wall three, Sobey's legal entrapment weaponizing
- 10:38Speaker 2: the system against her child. Her son can't get essential
- 10:40Speaker 2: medical care. His entire future is this blank, unregistered void.
- 10:45Speaker 2: Every single path is blocked.
- 10:47Speaker 1: The psychological pressure, it's hard to even imagine. We heard
- 10:50Speaker 1: she actually thought about leaving the baby somewhere like a mosque.
- 10:53Speaker 2: She did. She considered abandoning him, hoping someone, maybe a charity,
- 10:57Speaker 2: would find him and give him a life and exist
- 11:00Speaker 2: she could provide. But the sources mentioned something profound that
- 11:03Speaker 2: happened the night she considered this, She had a dream.
- 11:06Speaker 2: In the dream, she successfully leaves him at the mosque,
- 11:09Speaker 2: years past. She sees him on the street, grown up,
- 11:12Speaker 2: a young man, and he walks right past her, doesn't
- 11:14Speaker 2: recognize her at all.
- 11:15Speaker 1: Oh that's heartbreaking.
- 11:16Speaker 2: That dream, the sheer agony of being erased from her
- 11:20Speaker 2: own son's existence, even in a dream where he survived. Yeah,
- 11:24Speaker 2: that seemed to be the final straw. She wakes up
- 11:28Speaker 2: and she's resolved she cannot abandon him to a world
- 11:32Speaker 2: that has already denied his very existence.
- 11:34Speaker 1: To what happens next, she just.
- 11:35Speaker 2: Goes through the motions, makes breakfast for Soby, like any
- 11:38Speaker 2: other day he leaves for work, and then the weight
- 11:41Speaker 2: of it all, the six months of dead ends, the rejection,
- 11:44Speaker 2: the fear for her son, the dream, it just crushes her.
- 11:47Speaker 2: The sources suggest she just lost control. That Rama wasn't
- 11:50Speaker 2: really there anymore in that moment, It was someone else,
- 11:52Speaker 2: driven by pure unbearable stress. She goes into the room
- 11:54Speaker 2: where her six month old son is sleeping, and she
- 11:57Speaker 2: strangles him. It's devastating quiet, but born from this utterly
- 12:01Speaker 2: warped logic. If she couldn't guaranteee his life, his existence,
- 12:05Speaker 2: maybe she could protect him from the suffering and oblivion
- 12:08Speaker 2: that non existence promised.
- 12:09Speaker 1: My God, And after.
- 12:11Speaker 2: She did it, she just closed the door to the room,
- 12:14Speaker 2: and then she wandered the streets for six hours, just walking.
- 12:19Speaker 2: The sources say, the tape of her life, the betrayals,
- 12:22Speaker 2: the walls, the final act, just played over and over
- 12:25Speaker 2: in her head relentlessly, until eventually she found herself walking
- 12:29Speaker 2: into that police station ready to confess.
- 12:32Speaker 1: Which brings us back to the beginning. But the story
- 12:34Speaker 1: takes another twist during the investigation, doesn't.
- 12:37Speaker 2: It a really shocking one? The police take Rama back
- 12:39Speaker 2: to Sovie's house, the scene of the crime. Sovie answers
- 12:42Speaker 2: the door. He seems calm, almost unconcerned.
- 12:45Speaker 1: And when they go to the room where Rama said
- 12:47Speaker 1: her son.
- 12:48Speaker 2: Was, the baby's body's gone, vanished, gone.
- 12:51Speaker 1: So the police must have thought.
- 12:52Speaker 2: Initially, yeah, they suspected maybe Rama was delusional, suffering a
- 12:56Speaker 2: psychological break, maybe she'd imagine the whole thing, the killing.
- 12:59Speaker 2: The chief investigator he had a gut feeling. He pressed
- 13:03Speaker 2: soby hard suspected a cover up, and sobe broke he did.
- 13:08Speaker 2: Under pressure, he confessed what really happened. He admitted he
- 13:11Speaker 2: came home earlier than expected, found the baby dead in
- 13:14Speaker 2: the room. And what did he do? He immediately called
- 13:17Speaker 2: Rama's mother.
- 13:18Speaker 1: He called the mother, not the police.
- 13:21Speaker 2: No, he called the mother, told her to come over
- 13:23Speaker 2: and handle the situation, get rid of the body. His
- 13:25Speaker 2: only concern was making sure he was completely removed from
- 13:28Speaker 2: any responsibility, any connection to the death.
- 13:30Speaker 1: And the mother. What did she do?
- 13:32Speaker 2: This is perhaps the most chilling betrayal of all. The mother,
- 13:36Speaker 2: apparently terrified of losing her connection to the wealthy Sogi, agreed.
- 13:40Speaker 2: She and her own husband, Rama's stepfather, came to Sovie's house.
- 13:44Speaker 2: They took their grandson's body drove it to a place
- 13:47Speaker 2: called Al Kannetier and buried him secretly in a charity
- 13:52Speaker 2: cemetery plot. They never contacted Rama, never said a word
- 13:56Speaker 2: to her, just disposed of the body to protect the
- 13:58Speaker 2: mother's link to Sovie's money. That it's almost beyond comprehension. Eventually,
- 14:03Speaker 2: the authorities figured it out, went to El Kannetier, exhumed
- 14:06Speaker 2: the tiny body. The forensic reports confirmed it death by strangulation.
- 14:11Speaker 2: Just as Rama had confessed.
- 14:12Speaker 1: So Hussein, so be the mother. They were all questioned,
- 14:16Speaker 1: all of.
- 14:16Speaker 2: Them summoned by the police, and predictably, every single one
- 14:21Speaker 2: tried to deflect, blame, deny involvement, point fingers elsewhere. No
- 14:26Speaker 2: one took responsibility for their part in building those walls
- 14:29Speaker 2: around Rama.
- 14:30Speaker 1: And Rama herself are everything.
- 14:32Speaker 2: Well in a terribly twisted way. She felt she had
- 14:34Speaker 2: achieved something, a release for her son from a life
- 14:37Speaker 2: of suffering and non existence. Her only request after confessing,
- 14:41Speaker 2: after the truth came out, was that when she eventually died,
- 14:44Speaker 2: she wanted to be buried next to him.
- 14:45Speaker 1: When you look at this whole case, Rama obviously committed
- 14:48Speaker 1: a horrific act, the final act, but listening to the
- 14:51Speaker 1: chain of events. It feels like like the judgment shouldn't
- 14:53Speaker 1: fall solely on her.
- 14:55Speaker 2: I think that's what the source material really pushes us towards. Yes,
- 14:58Speaker 2: she committed the crime, but the people around her. The
- 15:02Speaker 2: mother who abandoned her, rejected her and then covered up
- 15:05Speaker 2: her grandchild's death for money. Hussain, the predator who assaulted her,
- 15:10Speaker 2: denied his child and threw her out. Soby, who used
- 15:13Speaker 2: her desperation, made false promises, and weaponized the legal system
- 15:17Speaker 2: against an infant. You could argue they are equally profoundly culpable.
- 15:21Speaker 2: They didn't just fail her, They actively constructed the prison
- 15:24Speaker 2: she found herself in. They built the heat a soad.
- 15:27Speaker 1: It really forces you, the listener, to grapple with such
- 15:30Speaker 1: a disturbing question, doesn't it? What happens when all the
- 15:33Speaker 1: systems fail someone family, trust the law itself through that
- 15:37Speaker 1: missing birth certificate? What happens when everything designed to protect
- 15:41Speaker 1: instead conspires to crush exactly?
- 15:44Speaker 2: Ramo was judged understandably for lacking motherly instinct. But was
- 15:48Speaker 2: that final terrible act? Was it, in some unimaginable way,
- 15:52Speaker 2: an extreme distorted form of protection, protection from a life
- 15:56Speaker 2: guaranteed to be filled with suffering invisibility and constant reject
- 16:00Speaker 2: because he legally didn't exist. Where does the real failure
- 16:03Speaker 2: lie in a situation like that?
- 16:05Speaker 1: Just think about the power of a single piece of paper,
- 16:07Speaker 1: a birth certificate, the power to grant existence, and the
- 16:11Speaker 1: destructive spiral that begins when that basic recognition is denied,
- 16:15Speaker 1: actively denied by those around you. It leaves you wondering
- 16:18Speaker 1: when every door is a wall, what choices are truly left?
- 16:21Speaker 1: What happens when the only options seem to be suffering
- 16:23Speaker 1: or oblivion. It's a question that stays with you long
- 16:25Speaker 1: after you hear im a story