Hannah Foster: the final hours

When 17-year-old Hannah Foster started to make her way home along Portswood Road, an unremarkable strip of takeaway restaurants, low-key pubs and small businesses in the Bevois Valley area of Southampton, she was a stone's throw from her parent's house.

Hannah was a bright A-level student who had plans to study medicine. But on that walk on March 14 2003, after a night out with friends, she was snatched by Maninder Pal Singh Kohli.

The 41-year-old Indian van driver accosted the teenager and forced her into his work vehicle. He raped and strangled her then dumped her body in a tangle of brambles in Allington Lane on the outskirts of town.
The details of her last hours remain unclear but one thing is sure: she was very scared. After she was snatched she managed to make a desperate 999 call but because she could not speak directly to the operator the call was disconected.

Her mother, Hilary, later said that she had never heard Hannah sound so scared. During the 50-second recording of the phone call the teenager could be heard giving a false name, that of her sister, to a man who asked her questions. Towards the end of the call her voice could be heard saying: "Huh ... listen ... anything." before the line went dead.

After the call Kohli – who one local described as "a gambler, a waster, a drunk" – found a quiet place to park his van and raped the teenager. DNA from his semen was recovered from her body. Fearful that she would go to police, he strangled her.
After the murder, he dumped her body then drove home to his wife and two small children.

When Hilary Foster realised Hannah had not come home she texted and later called her daughter in the early hours the next morning. Records of these two actions proved key in proving Kohli's guilt: they revealed that Hannah's handset had been moving down the M275 outside Portsmouth at the same time that his distinctive work van was captured by CCTV cameras on the same motorway.
The next day, Kohli took time out from his normal sandwich delivery round and drove to a recycling bin in the Southsea area where he dumped Hannah's handbag containing her mobile phone.

Then panic set in. Kohli called an acquaintance from his Sikh temple, Balwinder Chalal, and, in tears, asked to borrow money for a plane ticket to India where he said his mother was seriously ill.

Chalal refused. Kohli borrowed the money from his father-in-law and flew from Heathrow to India on March 18, two days after Hannah's body was discovered.

A Crimewatch appeal on March 26 2003 alerted James Dennis, Kohli's supervisor at Hazelwood Foods in Southampton, who the defendant later claimed had arranged for him to be abducted. Dennis linked Kohli – known to his colleagues as Mindy – to the crime and phoned police. But the sandwich delivery driver had disappeared.

A year later, Hannah's parents travelled to India in the hope of finding Kohli, by now the prime suspect in the case. The ensuing media frenzy and £70,000 reward led to a nationwide manhunt and Kohli was captured four days later.

Calling himself Mike Davis, he had created a new life for himself in the northern town of Kalimpong where he was living with a woman.

A month after his arrest he confessed on Indian televsion and in newspapers that he had killed Hannah – a fact kept from the jury. The Tribune news service in Chandigarh said Kohli wanted to ''unburden'' himself and had decided to tell the truth.

''I am ready to confess to the crime before the UK police too,'' he told the paper. In his confession he said he was drunk on the night he had raped Hannah and had killed her when she threatened to go to the police. A month later he retracted the confession, saying it was "not by my own will".

The Fosters' satisfaction at finding Kohli soon gave way to frustration and anger as he languished for years in judicial custody in India awaiting extradition. He was extradited to the UK on July 28, 2007.

During the trial Kohli claimed he had been targeted by his supervisor James Dennis. The claim was part of a defence that at times drew gasps of disbelief from the court.

He said that he owed Dennis £16,000 and was having an affair with his wife. In revenge, he claimed, Dennis' brother had threatened him before he was kidnapped by three men, who tied him up and forced him to have sex with a woman. He realised later that it must have been Hannah as his semen was found on her body, he said.

Before the Fosters travelled to India, Trevor Foster explained that when he and his wife had seen their daughter lying in a mortuary, they decided that they would not rest until Hannah's killer had been brought to justice. Now at last, they can perhaps find some peace.

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