True Crime Tuesdays: The Push: Murder on the Cliff
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9Helen Archer | On 19, Mar 2024
At the start of September 2021, the day before her birthday, Fawziyah Javed walked to the top of Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh with her husband of 9 months, Kashif Anwar. As darkness fell, Anwar took selfies on Fawziyah’s phone. Soon after, he stumbled down the incline, calling for others to phone emergency services.
His wife, 17 weeks pregnant, had, he said, fallen down a cliff. The Push, directed by Anna Hall, films Anwar’s 2023 trial for Fawziyah’s murder at the High Court in Edinburgh. Much like BBC Scotland’s Murder Trial – and even featuring lawyers who will be familiar to viewers of that programme – this Channel 4 production takes advantage of the fact that in Scotland, filming is permitted in court. And, like Murder Trial, it paints an intimate and fascinating picture of the proceedings, although the Channel 4 production is somewhat pacier and has the added benefit of apparently unlimited access to Fawziyah’s family, joining them in the back rooms as they digest the evidence of each witness.
Fawziyah’s mother Yasmin takes the lead, speaking for her family along with Fawziyah’s uncles – her father, Mohammed, though beaming in family photos with his daughter, remains silent and stony-faced throughout the two-part documentary, occasionally wincing at the evidence he listens to about the treatment of his only child at the hands of her husband.
Beginning with that first call to the emergency services, and the initial witness to Anwar’s call for help, the trial soon looks into the background of the relationship between the two. Having met and been charmed by Anwar, and agreeing to marry him, the previously independent and vivacious Fawziyah – a solicitor by trade – moved into his parents’ house after the wedding, as per tradition. Her parents, fiercely proud of her education and her career, implored her to continue her work. But soon, Anwar was shutting down her social media, blocking male relatives, preventing her from going to the hairdresser, and disapproving of her wearing make up. He also accessed her online bank account and transferred her £12,000 savings to his own account.
Yasmin, from the witness box, tells of her distress at overhearing phone calls in which Anwar said: “You’re a disease in everyone’s life … the sooner you’re dead or the sooner you’re out of my life, the better” – a recording of which is played in court. She sits by her daughter’s side when the police are called to their house to log incidents of assault – all recorded by the officer’s body cam footage, and presented as evidence. Other witnesses – many of them strangers – come forward to tell of aggression they had overheard, while other attacks were caught on CCTV, in public, in broad daylight, all drawing a picture of a woman trapped in an ever-escalating abusive relationship.
Fawziyah became withdrawn, but by the time she set off from Leeds on her trip to Scotland with her husband, she had apparently already formulated an escape plan. On their return, she told her mother, she would move back with her parents and proceed with a divorce. She didn’t make it home, but she did do enough to ensure that Anwar would be investigated should anything happen to her – including her dying declaration on the side of Arthur’s Seat, in which she stated that she had been pushed.
What shines through the film is the magnetic personality of Fawziyah, and the joy she brought not just to her family, but also to all those who knew and loved her. There is, too, the grief and dignified anger of her parents, from whom, as Yasmin says, she was “stolen”. But more than that, this is as incisive a portrayal of coercive control and intimate partner violence as you are likely to see, terrifying in its intensity and seemingly inevitable, tragic conclusion. Yasmin now works with organisations attempting to help those stuck in such situations and achieve justice for perpetrators, in honour of her daughter. The Push is a fitting tribute to Fawziyah’s life and legacy.
The Push: Murder on the Cliff is available on Channel 4.