Ethsham Ul-Haq Ghafoor: £50,000 reward offered over 1994 ‘execution’ of Nottingham taxi driver

A £50,000 reward has been offered for information leading to a conviction in the unsolved murder of a taxi driver in Nottingham 30 years ago.

Cold case detectives are reinvestigating the killing of 26-year-old Ethsham Ul-Haq Ghafoor, who was shot dead in his car.

His body was found at Lambley Lane Playing Fields in the Gedling area of the city by a milkman early on the morning of Tuesday 22 November 1994.

He had been tied to the steering wheel of his taxi before he was shot. Police described the killing as an “execution”.

They made a fresh appeal for information on the anniversary of his death on Friday, as his sister urged those involved “to help bring closure to our lives”.

Aisha Ghafoor said “silence is not an option, it never was and will never be”, adding that someone out there “knows who murdered our brother or why he was killed”.

Mr Ghafoor, from Sherwood Rise in the north of the city, was known to his friends and family as Shami and was about to become a father for the second time when he died.

He and his wife already had a five-year-old son, and Mr Ghafoor was killed five months before his baby daughter was born.

Victim ‘got out of his depth’

Detectives believe the victim had links with criminals but was not involved in organised crime and may have “got out of his depth”.

The weapon used has never been recovered and no one has ever been convicted.

They want to find three Asian men who were seen with Mr Ghafoor in his black and white Ford Sierra in Carlton Square in the city just after 2am.

That was the last known sighting of the victim, whose body was found at 4.30am.

‘Viable lines of enquiry’

Nottinghamshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin told reporters on Friday he had set up a new team and a new investigation, as there were still “a number of viable lines of enquiry”.

More than 30 detectives will re-examine witnesses and review CCTV and other evidence from 1994 onwards, he said.

The officer said he was “absolutely certain” there were people with information about the murder who have not shared it with police.

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No arrests have been made yet, but Mr Griffin said “the net is starting to close” on the killers.

He called it “a dreadful murder of a young man, a soon-to-be-dad, who was executed in his own taxi in a secluded area”.

The reward money is coming from Crimestoppers and an anonymous donor, police said.