The High Court in Shah Alam today set April 30 for the decision on whether former lawyer N Pathmanabhan and his three farm workers should enter their defence on a charge with murdering cosmetics millionaire Sosilawati Lawiya and three others two years ago.

Judge Akhtar Tahir also fixed April 4 and 5 for the prosecution and defence to make their submissions.

Akhtar set the dates after deputy public prosecutor Ishak Mohd Yusoff told the court that the prosecution had closed its case and that they were offering 78 witnesses, including Bukit Aman Crime Investigation Department director Mohd Bakri Mohd Zinin for the defence.

A total of 713 exhibits were tendered during the 71 day trial which began on July 4 last year.

Pathmanabhan and the three farm workers, T Thilaiyalagan, R Matan and R Khatavarayan are on trial for the murders of Sosilawati, 47, bank officer Noorhisham Mohamad, 38, lawyer Ahmad Kamil Abdul Karim, 32, and Sosilawati’s driver, Kamaruddin Shamsuddin, 44.

Pathmanabhan, 43, Thilaiyalagan, 21, Matan, 22, and Kathavarayan, 32, are charged with committing the offence at Lot 2001, Jalan Tanjong Layang, Tanjung Sepat in Banting between 8.30pm and 9.45pm on Aug 30, 2010.

There are charged under Section 302 of the Penal Code which carries the mandatory death sentence upon conviction.

Besides Ishak, the prosecution were represented by deputy public prosecutors Saiful Edris Zainuddin, Idham Abd Ghani, Siti Rohaida Che Hamid and Nur Azimul Azami Mohamad Nor.

The lawyers representing the accused are Manjeet Singh Dhillon and Puspha Ratnam for Pathmanabhan, Gurbachan Singh for Thilaiyalagan, Amer Hamzah Arshad and Ng See Teong for Matan and Ravi Nekoo for Khatavarayan.

Earlier, Akhtar allowed an application by the prosecution to submit the record of an appeal and review proceedings of two prosecution witnesses, U Suresh and K Sarawanan, as exhibits.

Suresh, 28, and Sarawanan, 21, are serving a 20-year prison sentence in the Sungai Udang Prison in Malacca for disposing of evidence in the murder case.

Yesterday, the prosecution’s attempt to present the record of the appeal and review proceedings was objected to by the defence based on its admissibility and relevance to the murder trial.   

Ishak, when submitting the application, said the documents could be used in the trial because the names of the four accused were mentioned in the facts of the case, as well as in other issues, like place and time of the alleged murder and how the victims died.

- Bernama