By ALISON HORWOOD
Aucklander Alan Routley has waited three years to see someone held accountable for his daughter's death.
In India, about 11,000km from his home in Kohimarama, the 16-month trial of four men charged with killing his youngest daughter, Diana, is drawing to a close.
In August 1998, Diana's naked and badly decomposed body was found in a shallow grave under the floorboards of a house in the remote village of Brindavan, Uttar Pradesh, northern India.
For a year, one of her alleged killers, Dharam Deva Yadav, and his unsuspecting wife and young son lived in the house above her remains.
Yadav, Ram Karan Chauhan, Kalicharan Yadav and Sindhu Harijan have been on trial in Varanasi since March last year charged with murder, robbery, concealing evidence and possession of looted goods.
The lawyer acting for Mr Routley, Ehtesham Abidi, told the Herald from Varanasi that the men will probably hang for their crimes if the sole judge in the Session Court of Varanasi finds them guilty.
The trial is due to finish in December.
For Mr Routley, nothing can bring his daughter back, but justice can help to ease the pain.
"It's too late for Diana, but I don't want her death to be of no importance. I would like to see some sentence, not only to hold them accountable but to make the world safer for the next girl."
Since the time Diana's letters home dried up, Mr Routley has spent all his spare time and more than $100,000 chasing the truth and spurring on Indian police. The semi-retired civil engineer travelled to India twice and Nepal once to help to find Diana's killers.
"I had to go. My biggest fear was that she was out there waiting for me to come and help her." His final task on behalf of his daughter will be to return to India in October to appear as a witness in the trial.
Then, all he can do is wait for the verdict.
Inspector Raghavendra Singh, of Varanasi, says Diana, who had travelled to India alone from her base in London, accepted Yadav's offer to take her to his village "to see the real India."
Saying "yes" was the worst mistake she made in her short life.
Diana did not know he had a criminal record for beating and trying to rape tourists and that his first wife had died suspiciously.
Inspector Singh says Yadav had a penchant for rich, blond women, and his seven-room home was built from $US8000 in gifts from foreign girlfriends.
The pair arrived at his village about August 11, 1997, and Yadav told locals she was his "beautiful blond girlfriend."
Two days later, he and the other three accused got drunk on 90 per cent-proof country liquor and made sexual advances towards Diana. When she threatened to call the police, they strangled her with her own scarf and stole $5600 in traveller's cheques.
Each man's share was 20 times the annual wage in India.
The men bundled her into a grave 15cm below Yadav's floor, called a stonemason in the early morning to re-lay it - and returned to their drinking.
A memorial service for Diana was held at a church in Kohimarama, but her body was never brought home. It was cremated on the banks of the Ganges, where according to Hindu belief, death or disposal guarantees a release from reincarnation and entry to heaven.
Father's long battle to find answers
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