THE man accused of murdering his girlfriend, and dumping her body near Dummer, confessed while on remand, an inquest heard.

Ziaul Haque, 27, of Camden Town, north London, was being held at Winchester Prison, accused of the murder of Polish national Sylwia Sobczak, when he was found dead on July 28 last year.

Miss Sobczak’s burned body was dumped in a suitcase near Dummer on May 8 last year, sparking a nationwide hunt for the murderer.

The 26-year-old victim had been living in Tottenham, north London. Her body was found in the suitcase by a dog-walker on a bridleway half a mile from the centre of the village.

Home Office pathologist Dr Basil Purdue told the hearing in Winchester that Haque had used strips from his bed sheets to hang himself and the cause of death was ligature suspension.

Cellmate Wayne Downer told the inquest that Haque had initially denied being the murderer.

Mr Downer said: “He kept changing solicitors, saying he was not guilty. Then he confessed to me exactly what he had done because he had been caught on CCTV.

“He thought he would get away with it, then he realised he wouldn’t.

“He said he had taken his girlfriend Sylwia back to his flat, I remember him saying he had lunch with her.

“She had said she had kissed another bloke, had sex with another bloke and he had an argument with her. He blacked out and the next minute she was dead.”

Mr Downer said Haque said he had strangled his victim with the cord from the iron and then hid her body under the bed for “a few days”.

He added: “He found a spot to hide the body, put her in a suitcase, put litres of fuel over the body and set fire to it and drove off.

“I was disgusted by it – I can’t get it out of my head.”

Mr Downer said that he had informed a prison doctor that Haque had been talking about suicide, and was nervous at the prospect of spending a life sentence in prison.

He added that when he left the cell on the same day that Haque died, he said to him: “See you later mate, enjoy your next 20 years.”

In a statement read to the inquest, prison officer William Allen said he found Haque’s body as he went to let him out for exercise at 8.59am.

He said that the body was hanging by a ligature tied to a bar across the cell window.

Resuscitation attempts were made by prison nurses but were unsuccessful.

The jury at the inquest returned a verdict that Haque took his own life.

Haque, who had lived in Britain for five years, was to have stood trial on the murder charge at Winchester Crown Court.

The painstaking investigation into the case was the subject of a recent TV documentary.