Witness fails to turn up for Sarah Groves murder trial hearing
THE latest sitting of the trial of the man accused of Sarah Groves' murder was cancelled due to the non-appearance of a witness.
Yesterday was set to see the 120th sitting of the court in the case against Dutchman Richard de Wit, who denies murdering Sarah on a houseboat in Kashmir in April 2013.
However the current witness, Kuldeep Koul, who was first summoned on 21 October 2017, failed to attend court.
Sarah's father Vic said the latest setback was symptomatic of what her family were up against in search of justice.
‘The non-appearance of witnesses is the most frustrating and least justifiable reason for the case not to proceed,' he said. 'In almost every other jurisdiction in the world, penalties would apply and contempt of court charges would be instigated. Not so in Kashmir [India], where eleven hearings have been lost for this one reason alone and no penalties have been invoked.'
There are still fifteen other prosecution witnesses to appear.
'The list of witnesses summoned to attend the next hearing is revealing,' said Mr Groves. 'It makes no mention of witness number seven, the taxi driver who drove the accused, Richard de Wit, away from Srinagar towards Jammu before being ordered by the police to divert to an intermediate police station, where the accused was arrested.'
'He is clearly a key witness but there are reports that his whereabouts are no longer known. He was first summoned to appear on 28th March 2014, more than four years ago.'
The next hearing date has been scheduled on what would have been Sarah’s 30th birthday, Thursday 21 June.
