A WELL-KNOWN and respected pharmacist from Farnham murdered his elderly father with a lethal fruit smoothie spiked with stolen morphine then claimed it was assisted suicide, a court heard this week.

The murder trial of Bipin Desai, the 59-year-old former owner of Vaughan James Chemist at the corner of Lion and Lamb Yard and West Street, got under way at Guildford Crown Court on Monday after a four-month adjournment.

Mr Desai, a married father-of-two, was arrested at his home in The Street at Dockenfield 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, he 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 last year.

Bipin admitted stealing drugs from the chemist and helping his elderly father commit suicide at his family home in December last year. However, he denies murder, and took to the dock at Guildford Crown Court on Monday at the start of an expected three-week trial.

The trial was originally set to begin in July but was adjourned until November 6. It was again suspended on Wednesday due to the rail strikes on South Western Railway, with most participants travelling from London.

The court heard on Monday that Bipin had attended a pilates class at Farnham Leisure Centre on the evening of August 26, 2015, and later poured an unusually concentrated dose of morphine into a fruit smoothie for his father after watching Manchester United play on television together.

He checked on his father - who moved in with his son’s family in February 2015 - shortly after kissing the elderly man goodnight, and then administered a lethal dose of insulin as he slept.

Describing Dhirajlal’s death as a “well planned murder”, prosecutor William Boyce QC told the jury that Bipin hoped to mask the killing as a natural death and went through the motions of making his father breakfast the next morning before leaving for work at the pharmacy.

He said: "When he got in that night the defendant dialled 999. He said he had just come home and noticed his father’s curtains were closed.

“The breakfast he had placed on the table was not eaten and his father was not breathing. It was the start of a whole series of protracted lies told by this defendant.”

Paramedic Andrew Pigott later told the jury that when he arrived at Bipin’s home, the defendant “appeared at that time as someone who was receiving the news that their father had just died, in the normal way”.

Asked to describe his behaviour in more detail, he added: “Shocked, stunned and trying to think straight and process information.”

Two days later, when Bipin was told a post-mortem examination would take place on his father’s body, the court heard the pharmacist handed himself in to Guildford police station, accompanied by his wife Dipti and two sons and told officers he had assisted his father’s suicide.

Mr Boyce told jury members: “He said to the police that his father had been suffering from depression and had wanted to die so he could re-reunited with his [late] wife and dog.

“He said over the past four or five days his father had talked about ending his life, about wanting to ‘go upstairs’ which he took to mean heaven.”

However, Mr Boyce said there was no evidence to support Bipin’s claims, adding Dhirajlal suffered “no debilitating or disabling symptoms” and “was not, on the face of it, near death despite his advancing years”.

The prosecutor added a 20ml bottle of concentrated morphine solution Oramorph was ordered by Vaughan James Pharmacy on February 20, 2015, when pharmacy records show Bipin was the responsible person on duty, and delivered the next day.

“This bottle is not something the pharmacy normally ordered, it’s very strong,” said Mr Boyce. “All controlled drugs recorded at the pharmacy should be recorded in the controlled drug register.”

The post mortem examination revealed Dhirajlal had 1,038mg of free morphine per litre of blood in his system when he died and showed no underlying causes which may have contributed to his death.

“Concentrations as low as 50ml can give rise to toxicity for someone who does not normally take morphine,” added Mr Boyce.

“Some 100ml to 500ml in someone who does take phosphine can cause death. The amount given to father Desai was always going to be lethal.”

The prosecutor claimed Bipin’s account was “a self-serving act to explain the lethal dose of morphine in his father’s body”, adding “pleading guilty to the lesser offence is just to avoid the truth, which is that this was murder”.

Bipin Desai sold Vaughan James Chemist several 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.

It is alleged that he stole a quantity of morphine belonging to 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.