A police officer stands guard at an Akoranga Drive crime scene in Northcote, two days after the June 4, 2020, stabbing death of resident Shivam Sharma. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Mayur Masand is haunted by memories of watching his close friend stabbed to death at their Auckland home - himself wounded and unable to stop the mentally ill room-mate who attacked them both, believing he could telepathically communicate with Satan.
In the year since the unprovoked attack, the 25-year-old has fought through the trauma. But in July, one week after Raymond Gill was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a high-security mental facility, Masand decided it was time to put his own mental health first.
He left New Zealand, his adopted home, for what he hoped would be a temporary - albeit open-ended - trip to the United States to receive family support from his siblings and parents. A citizen of India, he knew that he might have trouble returning to New Zealand before the end of the Covid-19 pandemic due to the limitations of his post-study work visa, but he was willing to accept that if it meant getting his head right after a year of constantly replaying the attack in his mind.
What he didn't count on, however, was Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi and Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announcing while he was away what Ardern referred to as the "most significant announcement in immigration policy in recent history" - a one-off, expedited pathway to residency for 165,000 migrants. One of the eligibility requirements is that applicants must have been on New Zealand soil on September 29, 2021.
Now Masand is hoping immigration officials will give him an exemption from the September 29 rule, seeing as he meets all the other requirements. He would have been in New Zealand that day, he said, had he not prioritised his own mental health after suffering a horrific crime.
"The major reason I am in the States is that I was not provided the right support and it was affecting my mental health," he said in a letter sent to immigration officials. "I have given my full support to the police and court till the end to help with this case to get justice. But there is no justice because my friend will never come back ever."
He has not received a response.
Masand still shivers when unwanted memories from the evening of June 4, 2020, surface.
"No one knows what happened that night - how he killed him and how de-human it was. How bad it was," he told the Herald, explaining that up until now he has only shared some of the nauseating details of that night with family and close friends. "It will be with me forever."
He and fellow immigrant Shivam Sharma had shared a room at a boarding house on Auckland's North Shore for two years prior to that night, becoming like family to each other as they set out to establish their lives in New Zealand.
Masand is a cricket fanatic, who bowled for the Birkenhead City Cricket Club and received a post-graduate degree in sports and exercise from Auckland University of Technology. Sharma, described by friends as a soft-spoken hard worker with great potential, was a physiotherapist, who had an AUT post-graduate degree in health science.
For the most part, it was a good living arrangement in the Northcote house, which had separate tenants in about five side-by-side rooms. But in the months leading up to the incident, they had encountered some issues with fellow border Raymond Gill, who bunked in a room next to theirs. They complained to the landlord that Gill made no effort to keep shared spaces clean, he left the area smelling like cannabis and he acted "weird".
What Masand wouldn't know about Gill until more than a year later, after the case concluded in the High Court at Auckland, was that he had a long history of mental illness and crime.
In paperwork Masand prepared for Gill's murder trial but never got to use, he recalled: "I heard my friend screaming my name very loudly. As soon as I heard his voice, I came out of the washroom and saw my flatmate stabbing my friend with the knife."
Masand recalled charging at Gill and pushing him away from his friend. But then Gill turned the knife on him, he said, explaining that his face started bleeding near his left eye and then he was stabbed in the shoulder.
"All this time I was shouting my friend's name and telling him to run away," Masand recalled. "After getting hit twice I thought I have to run anyhow, or else he will kill me."
As he ran, Masand hoped that either his friend would also be able to flee or Gill would follow him out the door - bringing an end to his attack on Sharma. But as soon as he reached the ground floor, Masand realised that wasn't the case.
"He did not follow me because he saw my friend lying on the stairs and he started stabbing him again and he continued to stab him almost three to four times in front of my eyes," Masand recalled. "Then I went outside running with blood on my face and shirt covered with the blood and I immediately called the police. The flatmate who was trying to kill us did not run away from the house."
After an hour of standing outside the house, Masand learned from police that his friend didn't make it. He was later heartbroken to learn that his friend had been stabbed 15 times with five different kitchen knives, he said.
"Living in a foreign country away from your parents and siblings, my room-mate became my family and he was like a brother to me," Masand said of Sharma. "We were there for each other in our thick and thin as living in a different country is not easy as it looks like.
"After this incident, I have struggled a lot talking to my friend's family and telling them what has happened without having any answers to their questions."
According to court documents, Gill had suffered "a chronic psychotic illness" for at least 10 years prior to the attacks on Sharma and Masand.
"These symptoms include entrenched bizarre and religious delusions including the belief that he is in direct telepathic contact with Tyra Banks (an American model and actress), with a supreme God, and Satan," Justice Grant Powell noted in his insanity ruling, which was based in part on five different psychiatric reports.
On the day of the attack, Gill believed voices were telling him to kill somebody in order to save the world, authorities said.
"There can be absolutely no doubt Mr Gill presents a heightened risk to the public," Justice Powell said as he ordered Gill to be admitted as a "special patient" at a secure mental health facility. "Any lesser response would simply not address the ongoing risk Mr Gill poses or the needs he has."
Under the law, Gill will be held at the facility for at least 10 years unless the Government intervenes. After the 10-year period, he could still remain in a treatment facility but would undergo more frequent assessments.
In addition to his multiple run-ins with the mental health system, including two prior occasions in which he had been hospitalised as a special patient, Gill had been charged with 104 prior offences over 22 years. They included other violent offending, as well as property and drug offences.
Outside the courthouse after the hearing, on what would have been his mate's 27th birthday, Masand expressed shock over Gill's criminal and mental health history.
He and Sharma had known nothing of that during the eight months they lived in the next room over. Something seems wrong with that, he said.
"It's just a system failure," he said, adding that he hoped the system could be reformed so that no one else would have to go through what he and his friend did.
The system may have let them down, but despite that New Zealand remains a place Masand says he loves and where he very much wants to stay.
"It's a great country and I feel like home there," he recently told the Herald. "If that case never happened, I would have never left New Zealand, because I was doing good there. I was playing cricket, I was enjoying and doing some work."
He was also considering pursuing a master's degree in New Zealand, but that was before the attack threw his life into what felt like disarray.
Under his current visa, Masand can stay in New Zealand until July 2022, provided Covid-19 travel restrictions end and he can get back before then. But in September, a new possibility opened for tens of thousands of migrants.
The new 2021 Resident Visa - described as a "one-off residence visa pathway for some temporary work visa holders currently in New Zealand" - has been characterised by some as one of the most significant immigration changes in decades.
"It's a big piece of policy work, probably one of the biggest ones in history," Immigration Minister Faafoi said on the last day of September, as he announced the plan. "It is something that we've been concerned about for some time, and I think eventually delivered to them what they really extremely wanted."
Ardern described the announcement as "a welcome move" - not only for those hoping to gain residency but also for employers "and for the team of five million as a whole".
As someone who has been in New Zealand for over three years on a post-study work visa, it appears Masand would have been eligible for the new residency pathway had he been in New Zealand on September 29, the day before the policy was announced.
Finding out about the opportunity - but then about the September 29 requirement - has been "very frustrating", he said.
"My priority was to get mentally fit, properly," he said of his trip to the US. "The only support was my family. That's why I'm here [visiting them in Texas] - to come out of that zone, to be honest. And here I'm doing better."
Masand's attempts to have someone in government consider his case have stagnated as he's tried to make his voice heard through the bureaucracy.
After sending an email to the Immigration Minister, he said his email was transferred to an associate minister and he never received a reply. He wrote a follow-up letter to the associate minister. When that didn't work, he twice requested his email be transferred to the Prime Minister's office and again was met with silence.
An email to the office of Northcote MP Shanan Halbert, who had talked with Masand prior to his leaving New Zealand, also did not get a response. Halbert told the Herald he never received the message. He didn't respond with a comment after the Herald forwarded the email to him, along with a waiver from Masand to speak about his case.
"I don't know if they're reading or not - if they're missing the emails," Masand said. "I have no clue."
Immigration New Zealand initially declined to talk about the case with the Herald, citing privacy concerns, but it later issued a statement after the Herald - with the co-operation of Masand - applied for a privacy waiver.
The new visa "recognises the immense contribution migrants have made to New Zealand during Covid-19 and the uncertainty they've faced with border restrictions and necessary changes to immigration settings", said Jock Gilray, acting general manager of border and visa operations. In addition to helping employers retain "settled, skilled and scarce migrant workers", it is also intended to give "migrant workers who have already demonstrated their commitment to New Zealand the certainty to make a life here", he said.
"The eligibility criteria for the 2021 Resident Visa were decided by the Government and they have been very clear about who is eligible for residence under this pathway," Gilray added. "This includes making it clear that the individual must meet the criteria on 29 September 2021 and on the date they apply.
"We acknowledge that there are some people who are not eligible to apply for residence under this category and understand that this will be disappointing for them. However, Immigration New Zealand's role as a regulator is to assess applications against the criteria decided by the Government. We do not have the ability to change the criteria or apply discretion when assessing these applications.
"Individuals who are not eligible for the 2021 Resident Visa will need to explore other visa options if they want to stay in New Zealand permanently."
Masand says he feels helpless. People are not hearing his voice and he's not in New Zealand to push what, for him, is a case that has the potential to influence the rest of his life.
"My whole career is stuck," he said. "I don't know where to go. I have no clue what to do next.
"There's a genuine reason why I'm here and I'm asking for an exemption - because it's not my fault. I was traumatised in a way where every day I would think of what I should have done different on that night to save my friend. Officials need to understand what my problem is here and what I have gone through.
"I deserve that chance. All I've seen is dark days for more than a year, without any fault."
OPINION: The debate ended with a 54-46 loss for Seymour’s team.