A hearing has been held in the murder trial of Marvin S. Y. Vargas and his lover Haleemath Lamha, linked to the murder of Mary Grace, a Philippines national who was employed as a nurse at Indhira Gandhi Memorial Hospital (IGMH).

Wednesday’s hearing focused on recording witness statements.

During the hearing held on Wednesday, a testimony was recorded from a nurse who rented a room in the apartment where Marvin and his spouse Mary Grace had lived.

The witness revealed that on the day of the incident, Mary Grace was seen cooking for her brother, who was supposed to be visiting that day.

The witness further stated that since they did not talk to Marvin and Mary Grace that much, as they were just renting a room at the apartment.

Haleemath Lamha, the Maldivian woman who was also employed as a nurse at IGMH and one of the two people charged in connection with the case, was granted conditional bail by the Criminal Court on 23 November 2023.

The Prosecutor General’s Office (PG Office) appealed the case at the High Court on 27 November 2023.

The appeal filed by the state is based on the fact that the lower court’s order to release Lamha on conditional bail was in violation of Article 49 of the Constitution of Maldives, Section 60(b) of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 59 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 13(c) of the Code of Criminal Procedure as well as other articles of the constitution.

Marvin, spouse of the deceased who was also employed as a nurse at IGMH, was also charged in connection with the murder.

Marvin was charged with deliberate murder of his wife Mary Grace on 4 January 2022. He faces accusations of injuring Mary’s head and neck and strangling her to death in their 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.

Lamha, who is Marvin’s alleged lover, also faces charges for conspiring with him to carry out the murder and assisting in facilitating it. Hearings in both trials are being held separately. Lamha 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 or place, 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.

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 husband initially claimed that she committed suicide by hanging. However, he is to have later changed the story.

The police arrested Marvin, 29, on 27 October 2021 under suspicions of murder as there were no signs of suicide by hanging on the victim’s body.

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.

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