Pharmacist ‘made murder look like assisted suicide’

A PHARMACIST murdered his elderly father with a fruit smoothie laced with morphine, then claimed it was assisted suicide, a court has heard.

Bipin Desai poured a highly-concentrated dose of the painkiller into the drink for his 85-year-old father whose body was later found at the £1.3million Surrey home they shared, Guildford Crown Court was told.

On Aug 26 2015 the 59-year-old checked on Dhirajlal Desai after kissing the elderly man goodnight and then injected him with insulin as he slept, the court heard.

William Boyce QC, prosecuting, told a jury that Mr Desai hoped to disguise the killing as a natural death and went through the “facade” of making his father breakfast the next morning.

When he returned home from work at the pharmacy he once owned, he made the fake “discovery” that his father had died in his sleep and phoned 999, the jury heard. When he realised a post-mortem would take place on his father’s body, Mr Desai went into a police station, accompanied by his wife Dipti and sons Samir and Nichil, and told officers he had helped his father commit suicide, the court was told.

But Mr Boyce said there was no evidence to support Mr Desai’s claims.

Mr Boyce told the jury that a bottle of morphine that had been ordered by the pharmacy where Mr Desai worked was “not something the pharmacy normally ordered”.

A post mortem revealed his father was found to have had 1,038ml of morphine in his blood. Mr Boyce said just 50ml was enough to kill someone not used to taking morphine. “The amount given to his father was always going to be lethal,” he said.

Mr Desai denies murder. The jury has been told he admits assisting a suicide and two charges of theft by an employee. The trial continues.