In the aftermath of the murder of her mother and daughter, Saima Mumtaz fell into a dark spiral of despair. It almost ended in her own death, when she took an accidental overdose of sleeping tablets.
But, with remarkable resilience and the rock of her faith, Saima fought back from the brink. Now, 14 years since the night her life changed forever, she's determined to see the killers identified and convicted, and plans to return to Greater Manchester - to see what secrets lie in the community she left.
It was on June 23, 2008, that a green wheelie bin outside Saima's family home in Bolton was set alight. Saima's mother, Hameeda Begum, 71, suffered 90 percent burns and died one and a half hours later. Saima's daughter, Alana Mian, aged four, died almost six weeks later.
Firefighter Steve Morris, who courageously tried to tackle the blaze and rescue Mrs Begum, suffered horrific, career-ending burns, spending nine months in hospital.
Saima needed nine skin grafts and treatment at Wythenshawe Hospital and a specialist centre in Leicester for collapsed lungs and burns to her face and body. She spent a month in an induced coma.
Only Saima's father, retired bus driver and jeweller Mumtaz Chisty escaped unharmed. He managed to get out and got a ladder from neighbours to run back and save the family, but was held back by other residents from going into the inferno.
The head of GMP's Cold Case Unit, who are investigating the case, told the Manchester Evening News that he believes it was a 'malicious, racist attack'.
Saima, who was only 24 at the time, has now written a book - The Returned Soul - about what she has been through. Its opening words are stark and chilling, from a memory fractured by deep trauma and loss.
"The night my mother and daughter were murdered, I had taken two paracetamol and gone to bed complaining of a headache," she writes. "I took Alana with me and left my mum sitting up with my mum downstairs.
"At least that's what I've been told. A month in a coma tends to mess with your mind. I can't remember a lot of things...I do remember my mum begging me for help as our home burned...I also remember wrapping Alana in a blanket, trying to save her from the smoke and flames.
"That was 2008. No one has ever been charged with their murder. No one has been held responsible for trying to kill me and my father."
The property Saima's family lived in was at Little Holme Walk, Great Lever.
At the time of the arson attack Saima had left the UK to start a new life with her husband in Australia, but had returned to Bolton so her daughter Alana could spend time with her grandparents before she started school.
As the family slept the fire spread to a second wheelie bin, and then a fridge left outside the house. The propane in the fridge ignited and flames spread to the mains gas supply causing a leak. An inquest was later told temperatures inside the house soared to 900C.
A week after Saima emerged from unconsciousness at Wythenshawe Hospital, she was gently told by a nurse that her mother had died. The same day she was put in an ambulance and taken to a specialist hospital in Leicester where Alana was fighting for her life.
When she arrived she was met by her husband. It was too late. He told her their daughter, "an absolute delight" who was "bubbly, adorably friendly, and smart for her age", had gone. "Everyone else had had a gap between the two deaths. For me it was two deaths in a single day," she says.
In a tragic twist of fate it had been another family tragedy that had brought the family to the house that was burned down. They had lived at Bradford Road in Bolton. But in 1988 Saima's brother, Amjed, was killed, aged seven, by a car, near their home. The family could not bear to live there any longer and the council found them a new home in Great Lever.
After her recovery from the fire, Saima returned to Australia to rejoin her husband, Fahad. But there would be another casualty of the tension and anger triggered by her loss - her marriage, and so she would return to England.
There was no escape from the past. She writes: "That night, the night everything changed, I was the very last person awake in the house," she writes. "I was the only person who witnessed what was unfolding inside. For the next several years I could hear Mum's screams every time I tried to close my eyes. This sound, her very last, haunted me for years, refusing to grant me sleep."
A choice Saima had to make also left her wracked with guilt. As dense smoke engulfed the house she had to decide whether to help her mother or daughter. She chose Alana. "The guilt was torment. It tore me apart day after day becoming an unbearable burden," she writes. "All these thoughts and emotions came rushing back, hitting me all at once. Everything came tumbling down."
Saima stopped eating, and, haunted by the awful memories, turned to anti-depressants, sleeping pills and painkillers to block out the torment.
"I got addicted to the pills," she says. "I underwent more surgeries just to get more morphine that would knock me out, put me to sleep. That was how badly, how desperately I wanted my brain to shut off.
"Eventually I was taking any kind of prescribed drugs I could find. I didn't want to see anyone, I would spend days in my pyjamas. My system got used to the drugs at some point and they stopped having an effect. I ended up overdosing and wound up in hospital again.
"I wasn't afraid of dying. I felt like a walking corpse. I could hear my own soul screaming. My soul couldn't take the weight of my body," she says in her book.
Saima hit rock bottom, but in doing so found a way to survive.
She woke one morning covered in blood from a nosebleed caused by the drugs and thought 'what have I become?' That low point was the catalyst for her regaining her self respect. She told the MEN: "I didn't want to be remembered as someone who gave up on life, or as a coward."
She found comfort in becoming 'closer to God' and more observant in her Muslim faith. She has now worked in social care for six years, obtained diplomas, and remarried. She has dedicated herself to looking after her dad. But she is also driven by a search for the truth.
Currently living in Stoke, Saima is planning to come back to Bolton. Her life has a degree of normality now, but the determination to see those who took her daughter's and mum's lives will never fade.
She told the MEN:"I will not give up," she says. "My mum and daughter's lives mattered, they still matter. Today I found the receipt for Alana's school application fee - she was supposed to start school full time September 2008. It was all paid and uniform was ordered.
"Once I move to Bolton, I will then have more time to personally look into this myself and I will meet up with the neighbours I knew who lived on Little Holme Walk."
An inquest into the two deaths in 2010 was told police had identified two suspects as well as evidence linking them to the blaze, but that the Crown Prosecution Service had ruled the evidence was insufficient to support criminal charges. Key pieces of forensic evidence were fibres from a carpet which the family had thrown out and put in the wheelie bin.
Also in 2010, a man named as a suspect in the arson attack was jailed for telling key witnesses he would firebomb their house.
Simon Buckley intimidated a family after learning they had given statements to police about the fire which killed Alana and Mrs Begum. He had been arrested in connection with the arson attack, along with a 16-year-old boy.
Bolton Crown Court heard Buckley went to a family home and, on discovering they had a panic alarm fitted, said: “You're going to need a panic button because I'm Simon, I'm the one who did that fire and watch, I'm going to do the same thing to this house.”
Buckley also told a friend of the terrified family that he was going to get him shot and added he was going to ring his 'boys' to come round to firebomb the house.
Buckley, 24 at the time of the court hearing, and then of Tonge Moor Road, Bolton, admitted threatening to take revenge against the witnesses at court but twice failed to attend subsequent hearings to be sentenced.
He was jailed for three years for the intimidation and four months for the bail offences when he appeared at court, with Judge Steven Everett, sentencing, saying witness intimidation offences 'strike at the very root of our justice system'.
Two other people took part in the October 2008 offending against the intimidated witnesses - the 16-year-old boy, who pleaded guilty to affray and was sentenced to a nine-month referral order, and a woman, who was given a suspended jail term after she admitted her part in the intimidation.
Buckley and the 16-year-old suspect were never charged in connection with the arson attack that claimed the lives of Mrs Begum, and Alana.
But Judge Everett said, at the intimidation sentencing: “This incident followed a police investigation into what was undoubtedly a murder inquiry where two people died as a result of a house fire.
“It is clear that Simon Buckley was investigated and the suspicion fell upon him and another."
Martin Bottomley, head of Greater Manchester Police's Cold Case Unit, is forthright in his assessment of the circumstances which robbed Saima of her mum and five-year-old daughter: “My personal view is that this was a malicious racist attack on a normal family living a normal life," he told the Manchester Evening News. "The consequences for all involved have been far reaching and long lasting.
"Steve Morris, the brave firefighter, suffered severe injuries which will always be with him. The family lost a four year old girl and her grandmother. Someone knows who carried out this horrendous attack and living with this knowledge must be preying on their conscience, if they have one. They need to do the right thing and allow justice to be done for all. Alana and Hameeda will never be forgotten and Greater Manchester Police will never give up on this case."
Anyone with information about the murders can call Greater Manchester Police's Cold Case Unit on 0161 856 5978 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Someone must know something - read more unsolved cases from Greater Manchester below:
Wrong place, wrong time - the tragic chain linking three young men's killings
The chilling echoes between the Ripper attacks and the killings of Jacci and Barbara
A piece of carpet and a pinafore dress... the mystery of the Angel of the Meadow murder
Irish Republican paramilitary hitman is 'prime suspect' in unsolved murder of Withington car dealer
