THE man accused of killing Hannah Foster thought he would be killed by his abductors, a court has heard.
Jurors have heard that Maninder Pal Singh Kohli was himself abducted, tied up and blindfolded, before being put in a van were he was forced to have sex with a girl.
Giving evidence, Kohli said: "Maybe they were taking revenge with a working girl but everything I now know she must have been or may have been in the same position as me. Now I think she’d been forced to have sex with me."
He was asked by his defence counsel Abbas Lakha QC if he heard hear anything from the girl. He said: “I didn’t hear anything, no.”
“They asked me to lift up, my trousers were lifted up.”
Mr Lakha asked Kohli: “Do you know what happened to the girl?” To which he replied: “I know nothing, I hear nothing.”
Kohli said he was then asked to get back in the car and later heard someone say, 'why don’t you kill him?'. Kohli told jurors he was then told: “If you go to the police, the girl will report you, that you had forcibly sexed with her.”
The court heard how there was then a discussion about where the men were going to drop Kohli off. Kohli said: “They said we will keep an eye on you.”
Kohli said about ten to 15 minutes passed before the vehicle stopped and his hands were untied.
He said: “Before they opened my blindfold they told me 'don’t look back'. I just started walking. It was the right hand side of the Mitre pub.”
Describing what happened once he got into the van he had left at the Mitre pub earlier that night, he said: "I have been thinking they were going to kill me. This was like a second life to me. I go home straight away.” Asked why he never went to the police Kohli said he had been threatened not to and didn’t want to cause himself any trouble.
The court heard that when he got home he slept for a couple of hours before his wife woke him up to go to work.
Kohli, 41, denies the abduction, imprisonment, rape and murder of 17-year-ols Hannah.
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