Croydons Muslim community has offered its support to one of their leading figures, who was detained at the Old Bailey last week for battering his pregnant daughter-in-law to death.

The highly respected Mohammad Yousaf, 64, beat Aneela Malik, 30, over the head with a piece of wood and knifed her after a quarrel broke out while they were alone in their home in Kidderminster Road, West Croydon, in February 2000.

Yousaf, who was credited with helping to bring Croydon its first mosque in the 1970s, was detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983 after pleading guilty to manslaughter with diminished responsibility. Doctors found he suffered from a paranoid psychosis.

After the attack Mrs Malik, five months pregnant at the time, was taken to hospital with a fractured skull and several knife wounds, but died several weeks later on March 4.

Hafiz Rahman, general secretary of the Muslim Association of Croydon, said: Obviously my sympathies lie with him, his son and the children. The people who saw him working for the community have nothing bad to say about him. Were hoping that in the not to distant future he will be released and can come back to the community.

Iqball Khokhar, a friend of Yousaf and head of Croydons Ethnic Minority Advice Bureau, saw him in January last year.

He said Yousaf was not an aggressive man, but the death of his wife about eight years ago had affected him deeply and caused depression.

Mr Khokhar added: The community have a duty to provide a comfort to the person because he was not of that type.

The Old Bailey heard that Mr Yousaf had believed his evil daughter-in-law was trying to steal from him and poison him with weedkiller.

On the day of the killing, Yousaf called the emergency services who arrived to find Yousaf covered in blood and Aneela lying in a back room with severe head injuries. A blood-stained lump of wood and a large knife lay nearby. Yousaf was backed in court by the former of the Speaker of the House of Commons and MP for Croydon North-East, Lord Bernard Weatherill, who took the stand as a character witness.

Judge David Stokes QC said: What you did was indeed terrible. Your daughter-in-law, pregnant with her fourth child, and a model of patience, a dutiful daughter-in-law who was battered to death by you over a trivial dispute. That is something you will have to live with for the rest of your days.

I accept this action was totally out of character and was caused by a combination of paranoid illness and paranoia.

Yousaf was led away to return to the Redford Lodge Hospital in Edmonton.

By.Angeline Albert