London, Sept. 8: Detectives investigating the murder of a 17-year-old student who vanished from her home almost a year ago arrested five members of her family yesterday.

Shafilia Ahmed, of Warrington, Cheshire, disappeared shortly after returning from a trip to Pakistan, during which she refused to take part in an arranged marriage to a distant cousin.

Her parents, Iftikhar, a taxi driver, and his wife, Farzana, were later arrested on suspicion of her kidnap but no charges were brought against them. The couple were not among the five arrested yesterday.

Police made the arrests at several addresses in Bradford, West Yorkshire. Those being held are a woman in her twenties, a man in his early thirties, two men in their late thirties and a man in his sixties.

Police suspected Shafilia had been murdered, possibly as the victim of an honour killing, because she failed to replenish supplies of drugs needed to keep her alive.

While in Pakistan, she had severely damaged her gullet by drinking a quantity of bleach and, even after returning to Britain, required frequent medical attention.

Detectives have built up a picture of a girl torn between her Asian upbringing and her desire to embrace aspects of western culture.

The latest development in the hunt for her killer came three days before the anniversary of her disappearance and seven months after her badly decomposed body was found in undergrowth beside a riverbank near Kendal, Cumbria.

Shafilia had spent most of September 11 at Priestley Sixth Form College and later went to a local call centre where she worked four nights a week. Her mother picked her up and drove her home.

She went to bed, as she did every night, with her seven-year-old sister. When the household awoke, she had gone. She was reported missing eight days later by her former teachers at Great Sankey High School.

Cheshire police have portrayed the ?intelligent, ambitious and popular? teenager as a girl torn between traditional family ties and western culture. At home she spoke Urdu and observed Muslim prayers with her three sisters and younger brother. But at the same time she idolised pop singers, wore tight jeans and secretly stored the mobile phone numbers of male friends at college.