The Fiji Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by Muhammed Raheesh Isoof and upheld his convictions for the murder of five members of a family and the attempted murder of an 11-month-old child in the widely publicised Nausori Highlands case.
In a judgment delivered on May 28, a three-judge bench comprising Court of Appeal President Justice Isikeli Mataitoga, Justice Gerrard Winter and Justice Gus Andrée Wiltens rejected all grounds advanced by Isoof and confirmed the convictions entered by the High Court in January 2022.
Isoof was convicted of five counts of murder and one count of attempted murder after the bodies of Nirmal Kumar, his wife Usha Devi, their daughter Nileshni Kajal, and two grandchildren, Sanah Singh and Samarah Singh, were discovered at a remote location in the Nausori Highlands in August 2019. An 11-month-old child, Samaira Kumar, was found alive at the scene.
The Court of Appeal said the trial judge had correctly concluded that the deaths were caused by acute pesticide poisoning and that the evidence, while entirely circumstantial, pointed only to Isoof’s guilt.
In its judgment, the court highlighted a number of proven facts relied upon by the trial judge, including evidence that Isoof had taken the family to the Nausori Highlands on the day of the killings, had been present with them at the remote location shortly before their deaths, and later attempted to conceal his involvement when family members began searching for the victims.
The court also noted evidence that Isoof had inquired about a highly toxic pesticide known as “Lannate” before the deaths and that ritual items linked to the planned trip were found at the crime scene bearing his DNA.
Judges found that Isoof failed to provide a reasonable explanation of how he parted company with the family and rejected his account that he had merely dropped them off before returning home.
“The proven circumstantial evidence, if taken together, do not lead to any other inference or hypothesis consistent with the Appellant’s innocence,” the trial judge had concluded, a finding endorsed by the Court of Appeal.
The appellate court dismissed all 24 grounds raised against conviction, including arguments relating to alleged non-disclosure of evidence, hearsay evidence, DNA evidence, trial fairness, and the sufficiency of the prosecution case.
The judges found that the trial court had carefully analysed the evidence and properly applied the law governing circumstantial evidence and the “last person seen with the deceased” principle.
“We see no error in his decision that there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Isoof poisoned the family,” the Court of Appeal stated.
The appeal was dismissed and all six convictions were confirmed.
