Kahlon, 41, was arrested last year after Aiden Sagala, a 21-year-old co-worker at Fonterra, died in hospital after drinking a can of Honey Bear House Beer. It was part of a shipment of nearly 29,000 cans that had arrived in New Zealand from Canada - part of a major drug smuggling ruse in which some of the cans contained liquid methamphetamine.
Prosecutors have alleged Kahlon was aware of the scheme and got rid of some of the cans with real beer - deemed worthless in comparison to the illicit drug haul - by giving away cases at a time to friends and family. Sagala, all parties have agreed, had no inkling that what he was drinking that day was dangerous.
In her opening address to jurors this morning in the High Court at Auckland, defence lawyer Emma Priest contended her client had no inkling either.
“He did not know what he was being dragged into,” Priest said of the drug operation, which was headed by a friend and former co-defendant of Kahlon’s with ongoing name suppression who recently pleaded guilty to multiple drugs charges.
“You may think he’s naive,” but he’s not a liar, the lawyer said.
Aiden Sagala, 21, died in March 2023 after drinking beer contaminated with methamphetamine. Co-worker Himatjit Kahlon is on trial for manslaughter.
Priest said her client wouldn’t give evidence because he was already “candid and forthcoming” in a police interview that was played for jurors last week. Entering the witness box would only allow the Crown to “ridicule” him more as police did during the interview, she suggested.
Kahlon said acknowledged to police he helped pour out cans at the Manukau warehouse leased by the co-defendant and saw buckets full of white crystals there, but he assumed it “must have something to do with cocktail making”.
The defence emphasised today that the job of jurors isn’t for each one of them to consider whether they would have known better had they been in the situation. Instead, their job is to determine what Kahlon’s mindset would have been at the time.
To do so, the lawyer said, it was important to consider Kahlon’s “kind nature” and his “blind trust of people”. He came from a religious culture in India where helping friends was emphasised, and he was “at the extreme end of that spectrum”, she said.
The defence read aloud two statements from friends to emphasise the point.
Dilpreet Singh and Ajaypal Singh both described the defendant as a generous friend who thought nothing of loaning them thousands of dollars at a time whenever they were in need.
“He would help with anything as a friend,” Dilpreet Sing said. “I’ve never known Jimmy to be involved with anything illegal - not at all. He always wanted to help people.”
Ajaypal Singh described how the defendant picked him up from the airport when he arrived in New Zealand on a student visa years ago and insisted on driving him for the first week of school. The defendant loaned him $17,000 in 2019 that has not yet been paid back and on other occasions gave him loans of $1000, $2000 or $5000, he recalled.
“If you’re in his friend zone you don’t have to worry - he’ll take your stress,” he said.
Ajaypal Singh also knew the co-defendant with name suppression, who he described as coming from a much-respected family. The unusual reason for that respect was outlined to jurors but has been suppressed. Justice Kiri Tahana warned jurors not to discuss the matter outside court.
Himatjit Kahlon's former co-defendant, who has name suppression, appears at Auckland District Court in 2023. The co-defendant was never charged with manslaughter but recently pleaded guilty to multiple charges involving drug importation via containers of beer and kombucha. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The co-defendant’s respected standing in the community made Kahlon all the more likely to lend a hand with the beer without questioning his motives, the defence has suggested.
Jurors also heard today from Juliet Iopu, a Fonterra manager who worked with both Kahlon and Sagala. She recalled going to Auckland Hospital with Kahlon and other co-workers after realising Sagala was seriously ill.
“I was speechless,” she recalled of the hospital scene, in which Sagala’s family was praying around him with a minister. “I had a really special bond with him. He reminds me so much of my baby brother.”
She also had a friendship with Kahlon, who she described as “stubborn” but “very kind”. He lent her $2000 after the death of her father last year, which she said she hasn’t been able to pay back yet because of how it would look for a potential witness to visit the defendant.
Himatjit "Jimmy" Kahlon appears in Auckland District Court in 2023. He is on trial for the alleged manslaughter of Aiden Sagala, who unknowingly drank meth-laced beer. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Iopu, the only defence witness to give evidence in person, had trouble remembering the car ride home after the hospital visit but prosecutor Robin McCoubrey directed her to her police statement last year.
“Jimmy kept saying, ‘Was it the drinks?’” she had told police. “He looked worried. I didn’t know what he was talking about ... He said he had given Aiden the drinks from his car.”
McCoubrey painted a much different picture of the defendant during the Crown closing address that followed the defence case. He pointed out that immediately after visiting Sagala at the hospital, the defendant went to the Manukau warehouse and returned multiple trays of the beer.
At that point, no one knew methamphetamine was the reason for Sagala being critically unwell but the defendant had figured it out and was trying to “cover his tracks”, the prosecutor said.
While the co-defendant with name suppression was heavily involved in the drug importation, it was both men who were responsible for processing the estimated 700kg of liquid methamphetamine, which would have had a street value of roughly $80 million, McCoubrey said.
“No one is saying that these two guys are [’80s drug lord] Pablo Escobar,” he said, adding that one doesn’t need to have a tiger on a lead or “a hacienda in Columbia” to be involved in the drug trade. But the fact Kahlon came and went as he pleased from the warehouse and had his own key shows that he wasn’t just visiting the place to have a drink with a friend, as he initially told police, McCoubrey said.
“There is simply no context in which Jimmy Kahlon thinks they’re making cocktails in that warehouse,” the prosecutor added, pointing to photos that police took inside the warehouse. “In every available space there are buckets and buckets of meth drying...
“He’s a manager in charge of 27 people at Fonterra. He’s no idiot. He’s not a vulnerable man who’s been taken advantage of.”
Jurors are set to hear the defence closing address when they return to court tomorrow morning, followed by summing up by the judge and deliberations.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
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