Hannah jury considers verdicts
Updated on 24 November 2008
The jury in the trial of a man accused of the murder of teenager Hannah Foster has retired to consider its verdicts.
Maninder Pal Singh Kohli, 41, denies the charge plus other counts of rape, kidnap and false imprisonment of Hannah, 17, who disappeared after a night out with friends in Southampton in March 2003.
Her body was found by the side of a road two days later and Kohli then fled to India but was extradited back to the UK last year.
Kohli has told the jury at Winchester Crown Court that he was abducted and forced to have sex with a girl he now knows to be Hannah.
He claims he was kidnapped as part of a revenge plot because he had blackmailed a colleague for £16,000 so he would not reveal an affair he had been having with the man's wife.
The court has heard that the defendant had borrowed money from colleague James Dennis to pay for his "gambling addiction".
Kohli told the jury that he had a hold over his colleague at Hazelwood Foods because he had had an affair with Mr Dennis' wife, Carole, and had threatened to tell people.
Both Mr and Mrs Dennis have denied the affair had taken place, the court has heard.
The sandwich delivery driver has told the court he was threatened by Mr Dennis' brother Jonathan and then abducted and forced to have sex with a girl as a blackmail tool.
He said that the gang, who asked him to pay them £25,000, would say the girl had been raped if he went to the police.
© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
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