A PHARMACIST has admitted stealing drugs from a chemist in Farnham and helping his elderly father commit suicide at his family home in Dockenfield, a court has heard.

Bipin Desai, the 58-year-old former owner of Vaughan James Chemist in West Street, Farnham, was arrested at his home in The Street in August 2015 shortly after police found the body of his father, 85-year-old Dhirajlal Desai, at the same address.

Following a lengthy police investigation, Mr Desai was charged with the murder of his father, encouraging or assisting in a suicide “in the alternative”, and the theft of morphine and insulin by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in November this year.

He appeared at Guildford Crown Court for a plea and trial preparation hearing on Wednesday, December 8, and entered guilty pleas to the assisted suicide charge and both counts of theft.

However, following an application by Mr Desai’s lawyer Paul Bogan QC to dismiss the murder charge, he was not asked to enter a plea on this count pending a hearing by a High Court judge.

This will likely take place at the Royal Courts of Justice in London during the final two weeks of March, with Mr Desai’s full trial set to follow on June 7, 2017, at Guildford Crown Court. The trial is expected to last three weeks.

Mr Desai, a married father-of-two, has been released on bail under the same terms agreed at Guildford Magistrates’ Court in November, which include a curfew, wearing an electronic tag, remaining in the UK and a surety of £250,000, paid by “several individuals”.

Crown court judge Robert Fraser said: “It was not unexpected that there may well be pleas to those matters when the bail application was heard - it doesn’t in my mind change the circumstances.

“I’m not going to interfere with what is in place.”

William Boyce QC, prosecuting, added the Crown Prosecution Service would not try to prevent the pharmacist being granted bail again.

Mr Desai pharmacist sold Vaughan James Chemist four years ago but, at the time of his arrest on August 29, 2015, still managed the pharmacy three days a week on behalf of its new owner Rohit Patel.

He was suspended from the General Pharmaceutical Council by a fitness-to-practice committee on October 5, 2015, and has not worked at the chemist since. His suspension remains in force.

It is alleged that he stole a quantity of morphine belonging to the chemist’s new owner Mr Patel sometime between May 1 and May 31, 2015, followed by a quantity of insulin also belonging to Mr Patel between August 1 and August 28, 2015.

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