A FARNHAM pharmacist who gave his elderly father a lethal dose of morphine has expressed “huge relief” and thanked his family and friends for their “enormous support” after being cleared of murder.

Bipin Desai, the 59-year-old former manager of Vaughan James Chemist in West Street, was acquitted of murder last week after his defence barristers Natasha Wong QC and Michael Field argued that the prosecution case was so weak no reasonable jury could properly convict.

The defence made their formal application at the close of the prosecution case on Tuesday, November 14, but it can only be reported now for legal reasons.

In a written ruling the trial judge, the Right Honourable Mr Justice Green, accepted that Mr Desai had acted entirely out of compassion for his 85-year-old father, named in court as Dhirajlal but known by the family as Bapuji, and withdrew the charge of murder from the jury and directed the defendant’s acquittal.

A verdict of guilty of murder would be “perverse and irrational”, the judge ruled, adding the direct evidence in the case “unequivocally supports the defence position that this is assisted suicide.”

“Your acts of assistance were acts of pure compassion and mercy,” said Mr Justice Green. “Your father had a solid and firm wish to die. For him, being assisted to die would be fulfilling his wish of going to heaven to see his wife and being put out of his misery.”

The judge also spared Mr Desai a jail term for the assisted suicide of his father and two “trivial” counts of theft, suspending the chemist’s nine-month prison sentence for as many months, commenting: “You are free to now go with your family and start the process of rebuilding your life.”

After being cleared of murder Mr Desai said in a statement: “The past two years have been a time of immense stress for our entire family and it is huge relief that this ordeal is finally over.

“I have been greatly moved by the enormous support I have had from my family, friends, colleagues and neighbours, to whom I will always be grateful. We now want to start to put our lives back together and to grieve for my father.”

Mr Desai’s solicitor, Kishoree Kotecha-Pau, from Freemans Solicitors, added outside court: “This is a very sad case. Mr Desai and his family have lost a beloved father and they now ask to be given an opportunity to finally grieve for him in peace.

“We were overwhelmed with offers of support for Mr Desai from members of the local community.

“Dozens and dozens of people came forward to give us character references attesting to Mr Desai’s compassion and love for his father. Many of them came to court to offer their support.”

Following his trial, Mr Desai has also taken the opportunity to correct a number of factual errors reported in the press both nationally and locally.

When his case originally hit the headlines, in September 2015, it was reported that “following a tip off, police had found a body at [Mr Desai’s] home in Dockenfield”. Mr Desai says this has always been untrue.

It was he who called the ambulance, and later on it was his decision to voluntarily present himself at Guildford police station to explain in full to the officers there what had happened and his role in the affair.

Much has also been made, again both nationally and locally, of the prosecution’s claim that Bipin was watching his favourite team Manchester United on TV whilst simultaneously plotting the death of his father in the same house.

Bipin states this is “100 per cent untrue”, and is easily proved to be so as he does not subscribe to either Sky or BT Sport on which the football match in question would have been broadcast.

Mr Desai, a married father-of-two, was arrested at his home in The Street, Dockenfield in August 2015 shortly after police found the body of his father 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 from Vaughan James Chemist by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in November last year.

Bipin admitted stealing drugs from the chemists and helping his elderly father commit suicide at his family home in December last year. However, he denied murder throughout the police investigation and subsequent trial.

Prior to his acquittal, the jury had heard how Mr Desai had poured a highly-concentrated dose of morphine into a fruit smoothie for his father at their shared home, and checked on him five minutes later and then injected him with insulin as he slept.

A letter to the judge, written by Mr Desai’s wife of 29 years, Dipti, was also read out to Guildford Crown Court by defence barrister Ms Wong, which explained that her husband had tried to kill himself on several occasions.

Defending its decision to charge Mr Desai with murder, the CPS explained this week that the medical evidence showed his father Dhiraljlal was not terminally ill and he left no suicide note or recording to explain his motivation.

The original decision to charge Desai with murder, the CPS added, was made following a “thorough” assessment of the evidence provided by the police in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors and the DPP’s guidelines on cases of encouraging or assisting suicide.

It also referred to the fact that, in March 2017, a previous defence application to dismiss the murder charge was rejected by Mr Justice Green at Croydon Crown Court and the case allowed to proceed to trial.

John Law, a specialist prosecutor with the CPS Special Crime and Counter-Terrorism Division, said: “Bipin Desai’s actions in terminating the life of another person, even in accordance with their wishes, amounted to a criminal offence aggravated by his trusted profession, theft of the drugs and the active concealment of his actions from the authorities.

“Initially, Desai claimed he had arrived home to find his father dead in bed but after he was notified there would be a post-mortem examination he confessed he had given his father drugs and he later pleaded guilty to assisting the suicide of his father and theft from his workplace.”

Surrey Police, which investigated the case, added in a statement: “This has been a complex and distressing case for all concerned. We carried out a full and thorough investigation into the death of Mr Dhirajlal Desai.

“Within every aspect of this case and throughout our investigation we followed the evidence, which we presented to the CPS, and supported the decision to bring about the initial charge of murder at that time. However, we respect the subsequent decision of the court.”

Mr Desai was suspended from the General Pharmaceutical Council (GPC) by a fitness-to-practice committee on October 5, 2015, and has not worked at Vaughan James Chemist since.

His suspension remains in force and a spokesman for the GPC had not replied to