Murder of Mary Grace: court upholds remand of spouse's lover

A hearing has been held in the murder trial of Mary Grace, a Philippines national employed as a nurse at Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH).

The hearing took place at the Criminal Court on Thursday, during which the process of submitting previous submissions and responding to them, were carried out.

The state prosecutors had presented just one submission, requesting to dismiss the defense witnesses presented by Haleemath Lamha, the local woman charged in connection with the murder case.

Both the defendant and state prosecutors had responded to the submissions.

The next hearing will be on the judges’ decision regarding the submissions.

Presiding Judge, Hussain Faiz Rashaad had revealed that a hearing will be scheduled to issue the decision, in August.

The hearing also saw the judges bench reviewing the remand of Lamha.

As such, the judges bench upheld the decision to remand Lamha pending the outcome of the trial.

Charged in connection with the murder case are Filipino nurse Marvin S. Y. Vargas and Lamha, who was also employed as a nurse at IGMH.

Marvin was charged with deliberate murder of his wife Mary Grace on January 4. He faces accusations of injuring Mary’s head and neck and strangling her to death in her apartment in the capital city, on 19 October 2021.

Marvin faces a 10-year prison sentence if he is proven guilty of the charges raised against him.

Marvin’s lover, Lamha also faces charges for conspiring with Marvin to carry out the murder and assisting in facilitating it. Hearings in both trials are being held separately. Lamha’s trial is also proceeding separately. She faces six years in prison if she is found guilty.

She also faces additional charges for deliberately taking unauthorized control over the property of another person after the police found two injections from IGMH that she did not have authority to take out of the hospital. The two needles were found hidden inside her bedroom. She is also charged with carrying out an activity that requires permission from authorities, without obtaining permission after police found a drug issued only for the use of hospitals, while searching her bedroom.

If convicted, Lamha will be jailed for four months and 24 days for that offense.

Maldives Police Service (MPS) confirmed the arrest of Lamha under a court order, on 16 December 2021.

Mary Grace was employed as a worker at the Dialysis Center of IGMH. The Filipino nurse’s suspicious death was reported on 19 October 2021. After bringing her body to the hospital, her spouse initially claimed that she committed suicide by hanging. However, he is to have later changed the story.

The police arrested her spouse, 29 years of age and also employed as a nurse in IGMH, under suspicions of murder as there were no signs of suicide by hanging, on the victim’s body. Her spouse was arrested on 27 October 2021.

The murdered nurse’s body was sent to India for an autopsy and returned to her family in Philippines afterwards, on 7 November 2021.

Citing the autopsy report, the police institution revealed that her death is not believed to have been by hanging. The autopsy report indicated that she died from a “blunt trauma”, which refers to an injury of the body by forceful impacts, falls or a physical attack on the body.

Sources report that Marvin; the victim’s spouse and Lamha were having an affair. The latter is also a nurse employed at IGMH.

The police institution forwarded the case for prosecution on 19 December 2021.