Detectives probing the murder of a young mom on a quiet New Jersey street zeroed in yesterday on the husband, who suffered just superficial wounds in the ambush and made conflicting statements to the police, The Post has learned.
Nazish Noorani’s relatives said she lived in fear of husband Kashif Pervaiz, 26, whom they blasted as an abusive philanderer who has lied to them about aspects of his life, from his college degrees to his contracting business.
But most concerning was an ominous text message she allegedly sent her older brother just a month ago.
“One day you’ll find me dead and it’s going to be Kashi who did it, so save this text. You’ll need it,” she wrote to her brother Kaleem Noorani, according to a cousin. “Kashi doesn’t want to be with me, he abuses me.”
Her fears over being killed came true Tuesday night on a leafy block in Boonton, where she was cut down by gunfire that left Pervaiz with minor injuries. Their 3-year-old son, who was in a stroller, was unharmed by the nine-shot fusillade.
Sources said the shooting may have stemmed from a love triangle, and cops’ suspicions grew when the husband made inconsistent statements.
“The guy’s story was not working out,” a law-enforcement source said. “The time was always changing.”
Investigators believe his gorgeous Pakistan-born wife was the target of the savage attack and are looking at how he survived and the child was not shot, a second source said.
As cops turned up the heat on the husband — who remains at Morristown Medical Center — one of Noorani’s cousins told The Post that the mysterious Pervaiz’s “life is a sham.”
“He was such a pathological liar in my eyes,” the cousin said.
The lovestruck beauty married Pervaiz even though a background check run by her worried family revealed he had lied about graduating from Brooklyn Polytechnic and NYU.
Pervaiz also claimed he attended Columbia and was entering Harvard this fall to study for a Ph.D. in architecture, but neither school has any record of a student with his name.
“After I told her . . . they still got married,” the cousin said. “He didn’t go to the school. He never had a job. His whole life is a sham. She said, ‘I don’t care.’ ”
Pervaiz told the family he was a contractor, and records show a contracting business, Riyaan 786 Builders Inc., in his name.
But he apparently worked from home, and it was unclear what he actually did.
The cousin also said Pervaiz was violent.
“The family has been talking about how he was abusive . . . There were definitely instances of abuse,” he said.
Kaleem Noorani said that the marriage was shaky and that the trouble worsened when the couple moved to Boston several months ago.
A Boston neighbor, Raul Santamaria, said yesterday he once saw Pervaiz with another woman.
“About three weeks ago, I saw him behind my apartment on his motorcycle. He was with an Indian woman about 30, 35 years old, and he introduced me. He said she was his new girlfriend,” Santamaria said.
Heartbroken older sister Lubna Choudhry, one of five siblings, said the night of the shooting started wonderfully with a late family dinner to break the Ramadan fast.
At 10:55, Pervaiz was in a different room and sent his wife a text that they had to go home, and they left a few minutes later, she said.
“She was happy. She said, ‘I’ll be right back. Make tea for me,’ ” Choudhry said.
Additional reporting by Perry Chiaramonte