Rajinder, 35, is accused of killing 27-year-old Gurjit Singh at his Liberton home in January last year, stabbing him at least 46 times and attempting to decapitate him, leaving the victim covered in blood on his front lawn.
The trial, before the High Court at Dunedin, heard the final prosecution evidence this morning after which counsel Anne Stevens KC confirmed the defendant would not be giving or calling evidence.
In closing the Crown case, prosecutor Richard Smith stressed to the jury it was not his job to prove why the crime took place, only that it did.
"This case is not at all about whether it makes sense for the defendant to have killed Gurjit Singh. Your role is not to make sense of the defendant’s behaviour, to rationalise what he did. It should go without saying, murder is not rational," he said.
"When you look at all the evidence together you’ll have no difficulty being satisfied beyond reasonable doubt."
He laid out the prosecution version of events at Mr Singh’s Hillary St home, which he said was consistent with the evidence heard over the last fortnight.
Mr Smith said the altercation between the men began inside the home where the victim was either pushed or burst through a window to escape his attacker.
Rajinder, he said, at some point cut his thumb depositing blood around the house as he pursued the victim outside.
On the deck area, it continued.
"Gurjit Singh put up a fight trying to defend himself," Mr Smith said.
In doing so, the victim allegedly grabbed some of Rajinder’s hair – from his head or beard – which was later found in his hand during the autopsy.
Mr Smith called it "truly extraordinary" that Rajinder could deny involvement in the killing on that evidence alone.
"That’s about all the evidence you need," he said.
If the jury needed a motive, he pointed to the fact Mr Singh’s wife Kamaljeet Kaur had previous turned down an arranged marriage to Rajinder.
The court previously heard she had her bags packed and was ready to move to Dunedin to be with her new husband.
"Is it a coincidence [Mr Singh] was murdered days before Ms Kaur was due to arrive in New Zealand, when they were due to start their life together?" Mr Smith asked.
"Perhaps that opened old wounds."
The prosecutor also highlighted the "ridiculous lies" told by Rajinder during the police investigation.
He initially blamed a cut to his hand on a chainsaw accident from weeks earlier, only changing his account when shown CCTV footage from the day of the murder.
Rajinder then told police he had sustained the wound when he had taken his wife on a midnight driving lesson to Mosgiel and had fallen off his new bike.
"Cosmetic scratches" to the frame of the bike were just a flimsy bid to corroborate the story, Mr Smith said.
He suggested to the jury the trip to Mosgiel was just a bid to create an alibi or dispose of evidence – perhaps both.
"It’s a pack of lies," Mr Smith said.
During the trial, jurors were shown footage of Rajinder buying a knife, neck gaiter and a pair of gloves just hours before Mr Singh was killed, transactions the defendant never admitted to police.
And the items were never found.
Had he coincidentally lost all of them, Mr Smith asked, "or was he buying a murder kit".
The Crown also pointed to electronic evidence gathered from electronic devices linked to the defendant.
Despite telling police he did not know where Mr Singh lived, there was evidence of a search for his exact address on his phone less than a month beforehand.
Then, just hours prior to the murder, a phone used by Rajinder and his father had been used for an identical search.
Mr Smith said the defendant’s phone was completely inactive between 9.55pm and 12.01am - the exact window when the Crown said the killing occurred.
He told the jury the weight of the circumstantial evidence was "completely overwhelming".
"Use your common sense," Mr Smith urged. "it’s not rocket science."
