Sharma broke down in tears this morning as he recounted the exchange for a jury at the High Court at Auckland, as the second week of testimony wrapped up at Akash's murder trial. His brother, the defendant, sat behind him - his head bowed deeply into his lap.
Akash, who goes by only one name, pleaded guilty to murder in 2016, months after girlfriend Gurpreet Kaur was found stabbed to death. However, the Court of Appeal agreed in 2020 to throw out the conviction so that a jury can decide if he should be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Multiple witnesses, including the defendant's brother, friends and police officers, testified today that Akash had talked repeatedly about his email accounts being hacked and having been followed by unknown people who meant him harm.
Sharma told jurors he initially didn't believe his younger brother's statement that Kaur was dead. But they then walked outside to share a cigarette and Akash opened up about what had happened.
"He was telling me that she [Kaur] came back to his life to take some sort of revenge," Sharma testified.
Akash told his brother he was driving with Kaur to Hamilton two days earlier when "he noticed some cars were following him and she was signalling the cars". Akash said he pulled over after evading the other cars and confronted Kaur.
"He was asking her if there was anything she was hiding from him, if she wanted to leave him or stay with him, if she wanted to keep the baby and if she was planning revenge," Sharma recalled his brother saying.
Akash told his brother he then pulled out a knife that he had been keeping in his car because he was being followed and used it to cut Kaur.
"She started crying that she didn't want to die - she wanted to keep the baby and live with him," Sharma testified of learning from his brother. "And then he stabbed her two or three times in the stomach."
During opening statements for the trial, prosecutors said Kaur was cut and stabbed 29 times, including to her neck, chest and abdomen. While both sides have agreed Akash had mental health issues, jurors will have to determine if he was so mentally ill that he didn't know what he was doing was wrong.
Prosecutors on Friday also began playing for jurors the first of three interviews Akash had with police after his brother helped officers find the defendant. As the interview began, Akash again tried to steer the conversation to hacked email accounts.
"Okay, look Akash, the reason that we're talking to you down here about Gurpreet going missing, your brother has mentioned that you've stated you killed her," Detective James Ralph told him in the recording.
Akash denied admitting to his brother that Kaur was dead. In a long, rambling statement that followed, he told the detective without prompting about revealing to Kaur's family that she was pregnant and about a time when Kaur's father insisted that he be removed from a joint bank account.
"You can ask her parents because they really want to keep her away from me," he said.
"The last time I met her parents, they was like telling me to leave Auckland area and go somewhere else like Christchurch.
"And I was like, 'Some people are following me, have you told anybody?' and they were like, 'Nah, we haven't told.' Wherever I go, you know, boss, all the cars come and follow me and if I tell it to somebody everybody thinks that it's like fake or wrong, you know, like a loser."
Jurors are expected to continue watching the police interview when the trial resumes Monday.
