A Red Cross worker was brutally murdered by an armed gang at a hotel party after stepping in to break up a fight, an inquest heard.
Prosthetics specialist Khuram Shaikh, from Rochdale, was beaten, repeatedly stabbed, slashed across the face and neck and shot in the head with an assault rifle while on holiday in Sri Lanka in 2011. He suffered a total of 45 injuries, including a fractured skull and a severed jugular, in the sickening assault.
An inquest in Heywood on Friday heard of the terrifying scenes that unfolded in the moments before Khuram’s death sometime after midnight during a Christmas Eve party at the Nature Resort hotel in the coastal town of Tangalle.
Khuram, 32, had being working with amputees in the Gaza Strip in the months before his death, and was set upon when he stepped in to help a member of the hotel staff who was being beaten up by the 10-strong gang. Eleven men were arrested on suspicion of Khuram’s murder, including prominent local politician Sampath Vidanapathirana, who was said to be a member of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s Freedom Alliance.
