For most British teenagers in love, holding hands and kissing in public is commonplace. But for Manna Begum and Arash Ghorbani-Zarin, such behaviour was frowned upon by the Muslim community to which they belonged.

Simply being seen together in public brought shame on Manna’s family, a jury was repeatedly told during a four-week trial at Oxford crown court. Ultimately, the sense of dishonour caused by the couple’s love affair would drive her family to murder the young man and to pay for his baby to be aborted.

Today, a year after Arash was found in his car with 46 stab wounds in his chest, Miss Begum’s father - a 44-year-old Bangladeshi waiter - and her two teenage brothers have been jailed for his murder. The youngest killer is only 16.

Miss Begum and Mr Ghorbani-Zarin met in 2003 through school friends who described them as devoted to each other. James Ware, a close friend, said: "Arash loved Manna unconditionally. They both loved each other. Manna wore the trousers though."

The relationship caused a "battle of wills" in Miss Begum’s family, with the spirited young woman determined to resist the pressure to conform, the judge noted in his summing up. Her father wanted to bring his children up in accordance with the strict Muslim values he held dear, and had an arranged marriage planned for his daughter.

Miss Begum’s brother Mujibar Rahman, known as Muji, was furious at his sister’s "blatant" defiance and on one occasion slapped her three times when she refused to end her relationship.

"She acted contrary to religion and tradition by dating Arash. Instead of dating, she should have waited to have an arranged marriage," he would later tell police. Yet Muji himself felt it acceptable to obey "some but not all" of his religion’s rules. He admitted having sex before marriage, did not attend the mosque regularly, and enjoyed nights out clubbing in Oxford.

Nonetheless, he added, "it was more a matter of shame for Manna than anyone else".

Mamnoor Rahman, his younger brother, who was just 15 at the time he took part in the killing, said he considered Arash to be "a good friend to me". He had gone with Arash to visit his sister when she ran away from home.

In police interview, Muji said Mamnoor had been much closer to his mother and Manna than he and his father. "He was more religious, quieter," he said.

There was a "cultural divide" in the family between Manna's father Chomir Ali and his wife, originally from Bangladesh, and their children, who were born and raised in Britain. The judge said that Manna's relationship "broke religious and family taboos".

Manna’s close friend Cheherazad Jmil described Miss Begum as a "strong character", who never wore a head scarf or Muslim clothes, but opted instead for jeans and hooded tops.

"She would walk around the streets holding hands (with Arash)," said Miss Jmil, who warned her friend her actions would embarrass her family. "Muslim girls should not date. It’s just the way Muslims are. It’s shameful for the family. Her family did not approve of Arash."

At first Manna's family attempted to drive Arash away verbally. His father Raheem Ghorbani-Zarin, 49, an Iranian-born Muslim, said that when he met Chomir Ali, Ali told him: "He is going with my daughter. He should not do that."

Later verbal threats escalated to physical threats. Arash told friends in late 2003 that Manna's father had threatened him with a knife.

The pressure of her family's disapproval appeared to tell on Miss Begum in November 2003, who had been removed from school by her father and had her mobile telephone confiscated. In response she slit her right wrist in an apparent suicide bid. When the ambulance arrived the family refused to answer the door to paramedics, but instead pushed their daughter outside of the house, causing her to fall over.

In December, she ran away from home to stay with the aunt of a friend. She continued to see Arash and, the following summer, fell pregnant to him. Friends said he showed them a scan of the unborn child and took a job in Toys ’R’ Us so he could support Miss Begum and the baby.

Within weeks, he was found stabbed to death less than half a mile from his sweetheart’s home.

Twenty four hours later, Manna's brother Muji was charged with murder, but it would take a further four months to charge all three, with Chomir Ali charged in March this year.

The final vestige of the relationship - the couple's unborn child - was aborted after his death. In police interviews, Ali denied he had ordered his daughter to have an abortion, but admitted that despite debts of £15,000, he had lent his daughter £1,000 and his father lent her another £1,000.

Sharaz Ali Rana, a close friend of Mr Ghorbani-Zarin, said that he discovered Miss Begum was no longer pregnant in August this year. He told the court: "(The baby) was the only bit of him (Arash) left in this world and she just got rid of it)."

A close friend of Mr Ghorbani-Zarin, a 21-year-old woman who asked not to be named, spoke of the "balancing act" young Muslim people in Britain encountered - growing in Western society while living with their parents’ more strictly-held religious beliefs at home. "You have to balance it. You have to keep the respect for your parents but there are limits," she said.

She said the murder was "shocking" and how, at the time, she never suspected Miss Begum’s family. She added: "I’ve grown up with it (Western culture) so it’s normal to me now."

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