‘Papa, no’: Trial begins for man accused of smothering daughter to death

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Content warning: This story discusses graphic details of death and may upset some readers

A jury has heard the harrowing account of how a South Auckland father allegedly murdered his five-year-old daughter by smothering her in a car last year.

Mukesh Prashad, 38, has begun his trial in the High Court at Auckland on Tuesday.

He is charged with the murder of Tulsi Amola in January 2025.

Crown lawyer ‘Aminiasi Kefu opened their case by giving the jury their version of what happened that night.

Tulsi had been at a friend’s house playing, and Prashad told his wife he would pick her up.

“Before leaving he smuggled a pillow from their bedroom and took it outside, and he avoided his wife seeing him take that pillow out,” Kefu said.

“He also told his wife that he would go to visit a friend afterwards to give him a gift. That was a lie and that was part of his plan.”

Prashad picked up his daughter and drove her to Highbrook in East Tāmaki, where he instructed her to move into the front of the car.

“He then told police that he told Tulsi, that today they both are going to die.”

Kefu said Prashad used the pillow he had smuggled from home to smother his daughter until she died.

“While doing so, Tulsi said to him ‘Papa no, Papa no, Papa no’,” Kefu said.

Kefu said Prashad moved his daughter’s body into the boot of his car, driving around before returning to the scene of the alleged murder.

He tried to take his own life, unsuccessfully, and drove around before taking himself to the Manukau police station, Kefu said.

“He told the 111 call operator, ‘Hi there, I’m outside the Manukau Police Station, actually I killed my daughter, and her body’s in the boot.”

Kefu told jurors Prashad had been working in Australia and would make trips back home.

While in Australia he contracted herpes, Kefu said.

He spoke about a beach trip taken by Prashad and his family on Christmas Day 2024, where they were bitten by bugs.

Tulsi’s bug bites became infected, and she was taken to the doctor.

It was after that Prashad believed he had somehow infected his daughter with herpes.

Kefu said Tulsi’s body was examined after her death by a pathologist, who confirmed she was never infected with any type of viral, or sexual disease.

But it was this idea that his daughter had been infected with the virus that drove Prashad to murder his daughter, Kefu said.

“He also believed that Tulsi would grow up in pain, and would be socially isolated from her friends and family because of this infection,” he said.

“Mr Prashad then started considering his options of what to do with Tulsi, and he decided that, in order to save her from this suffering, save her from this social isolation, that he would kill her.”

Kefu said Prashad had considered using sleeping pills to poison his daughter, but did not want his daughter to suffer, and settled on suffocating Tulsi with a pillow.

Prashad’s lawyer, Sharyn Green, told jurors it was accepted that Prashad killed his daughter.

“What comes over the top of that is what we call a legal excuse, and that is that he says, at the time, that he was suffering a disease of the mind, and therefore he did not mean to kill his daughter, because of the disease of the mind,” Green said.

She asked the jury to have an open mind, and to scrutinise evidence presented to them by the Crown.

“Listen to all the evidence quite carefully throughout, listen out for the issue of normality or otherwise, and then hopefully we will all give you some guidance at the end as to what to make of it,” Green said.

Green said the one witness called by defence would be a psychiatrist, but that jurors would not hear from them until the end of the trial.

“All I ask is that you remain quite open to listen to all the evidence and not have prejudices at this early stage, and think that ‘this is something that is raised frequently by men and women who seek to get off and get away with murder’.”

The first witness for the Crown was called in the afternoon, Prashad’s wife and Tulsi’s mother.

She cannot be named.

Tulsi’s mother gave evidence of how they met through an arranged marriage, and said Prashad looked after her and Tulsi.

“He was very caring, he was very good, and he used to take care of me and my daughter, ” she said through an interpreter.

The trial, before Justice Pheroze Jagose continues.

Source:RNZ

Finn Blackwell, Reporter

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