Love story and tragedy

Iftekhar Murtaza fancied himself a bit of the rebel, a gym rat with red and black tribal tattoos on buff shoulders.

In photos posted online, he struck a "gangsta" pose – muscles rippling outside a sleeveless T-shirt.

But those who know him considered Murtaza more of a "wangsta," a harmless wannabe gangster who used punctuation marks to make smiley faces online.

Now some are not sure what to believe.

Murtaza – who had never been to court as an adult for anything more serious than a speeding ticket – appeared before an Arizona judge Thursday as a "person of interest" in the slaying of his on-again-off-again girlfriend's father and sister in Orange County. His former girlfriend's mother also was beaten and left outside the family's Anaheim Hills home.

The homicide victims – Jayprakesh and Karishma Dhanak – were beaten with baseball bats, stabbed and set ablaze on a hiking trail in Irvine, two minutes from the UCI dorm where Murtaza's ex-girlfriend, Shayona, lived, police and court records say.

Although authorities were not describing the 22-year-old as a suspect Thursday, they also weren't letting him out of jail. Murtaza was carrying a plane ticket to Bangladesh when federal marshals arrested him last weekend at a Phoenix airport.

A portrait emerged Thursday from close friends, school records and Murtaza's Friendster page of a man whose deep feelings belied his bad boy facade.
Hours after the murders, Murtaza planned to pick up longtime friend Anisha Vasani and another close friend from Westwood and drive to the Santa Ana hospital where Shayona Dhanak's mother lay unconscious. He and Dhanak had broken up a few weeks before – as they had many times in their three-year relationship – but Murtaza didn't think twice about rushing to her, Vasani said.

"He wanted to be with Shayona, for her," said Vasani, a psychology major at UCLA. "He just loved her so much." But the trip was called off. Police weren't letting anyone into the hospital room. Shayona Dhanak was under police protection.

On his Web page, Murtaza described himself as "someone who knows how to have fun but takes life seriously when it's needed."

At 6-foot-1, 171 pounds, Murtaza, a Leo, urged readers on his site to let the kid inside them "come out and play."

A former student of John F. Kennedy High in Granada Hills and Albert Einstein Continuation School in North Hills, Murtaza took a few junior college classes ending in 2005. He was a smart guy, friends said, who managed to make a good living without a formal education, paying for a glitzy Hollywood Hills apartment and a Range Rover. But his lack of enthusiasm for education concerned his girlfriend's parents.

Over the years, Murtaza shared the highs and lows of his love life in dozens of e-mails to Richa Singh, a Tucson woman he met about five years ago in Los Angeles.

His once-joyful missives turned heartsick as he became convinced that the Dhanak familiy was sabotaging his relationship with Shayona, 18.

"He felt kind of hopeless with the whole situation," said Singh, 23. "He told me he wanted to talk to the family and reassure them. He felt the whole family was ganged up on him."

Religion was part of the problem, court records said. The Dhanaks are Hindu, Murtaza is Muslim. Pressured by her family, Shayona broke off the relationship over and over again – but always managed to find her way back to Murtaza – and he would always take her back, Vasani said.
"Oh, my God, she is so mad at me," Singh remembers Murtaza e-mailing her during one of his spats with Shayona. But he never threatened any violence, friends said.

"Most Hindu families will give in after a while if they see the person really loves them," Vasani said. "He understood that with time that would happen. Everything with Shayona happened with time."

Shayona last split with Murtaza about a month ago, friends said, but no one expected it to last long.
"I could see the pain in his eyes," Vasani said. "But he was still smiling. He knew they would get back together."

Singh said Murtaza met Shayona at a party about three years ago and was instantly enamored.

"I met this girl. She is awesome," Murtaza e-mailed Singh.
But Dhanak knew her family would not approve of the tattooed Muslim man, Vasani said – and resisted his advances – for a while. He gave her a ring – rented a helicopter – and worshiped the ground she walked on. He overheard phone calls Dhanak had with her mother, disapproving of the relationship, but still he told friends he wanted to marry Dhanak – and that he planned to talk to her parents about it.

That's why friends they have a hard time seeing him as a killer, especially one capable of the ferocity shown in the Dhanak attack.

"He never said anything bad about her family," Vasani said. "He respected them. For him, it was all about love."

Indeed, Murtaza challenged people on his Web site to become his friends.

"Anyone who wants to meet me, I wanna meet you, and anyone who I wanna meet, you should definitely want to meet me, too."