Three prosecution witnesses testified against the Bangladesh man charged with the murder of a 54-year-old local man in an ice plant at Ihavandhoo in Haa Alif Atoll.
Police had revealed that the primary suspect, 27-year-old Bangladeshi expat Sumon Mia had confessed to the murder, adding that the murder weapon and the clothes he wore during the crime had been recovered.
During the hearing on Sunday, three prosecution witnesses testified seeing the suspect in the island in the wee hours of the morning of the murder. One of the witnesses said a man named Milan had approached him looking to his hire his speedboat for a trip to Haa Dhaal Atoll Kulhudhuffushi island.
The man was ready to "pay any sum" for the trip but the witness said he had not taken up the offer.
The 27-year-old expat had earlier shared gruesome details of the murder saying that the motive was the victim's failure to pay overtime and repeated verbal abuse. Sumon said the victim Ismail Umar verbally abused him for being on the phone with his wife leading to marital problems. Sumon's wife had threatened to leave him for which he had blamed his supervisor.
Sumon told the court that he had initially intended to strangle the victim to death but Ismail had woken up and he had stabbed his boss amid an altercation. According to his testimony, Sumon then dragged Ismail out of bed and stabbed his neck a few more times. Then he had left the rope and the knife and left the ice-plant to find a way out of the island. Sumon then had shared his crime with a friend who had advised him to get rid of the evidence and the body.
Sumon then had gone back to the ice-plant and dragged Ismail's body near the water tank in a bid to hide the crime. But without his friend who had refused to help, Sumon was unable to dump the body in the water tank like he did with the murder weapon. Sumon took a speedboat out of Ihavandhoo that morning and arrived in Hoarafushi island in the same atoll. The same day, he left Hoarafushi and fled to Kulhudhuffushi island in neighbouring Haa Dhaal atoll. He had planned to leave for the capital Male before police arrested him in Kulhudhuffushi.
The defence on Sunday had urged the court to deliver a sentence at the earliest. The prosecution is however yet to present three witnesses and some video footage.
Two other Bangladesh expats have also been charged with concealing the murder.
