25 Mar 2015

Jury in Prasad murder trial retires

6:51 pm on 25 March 2015

An Auckland jury, which retired today to consider its verdicts in the case of two men accused of murdering a man by setting him on fire, has been sent home for the night.

The body of Shalvin Prasad was found in scorched scrub in Kingseat in January 2013.

Shivneel Kumar and Bryne Permal deny murdering the 21-year-old .

The Crown said Mr Prasad was killed for the $30,000 he had withdrawn from his bank the day before he was found, and detailed how the two accused went on a spending spree in the days after the killing.

But the defence said there was no actual evidence to prove Mr Prasad was injured intentionally, and he would have been unconscious so could have been mistaken for dead when he was set alight.

In his summing up in the High Court in Auckland, Justice Geoffrey Venning told the jury the defence lawyers acknowledged their clients had lied in police interviews, but it did not mean they committed murder.

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