Trial & Error TV - Jamil Chowdhary letter from prison -
The blurred figure of a bandit … His accomplice: a killer with a shotgun. The law thought it saw this crime clearly and convicted the men it believed the camera captured. We believe we have a clearer picture of the crime and of one of the men convicted for it, the man convicted of pulling the trigger. A man we will show was never there. Trial & Error: Jamil Chowdhary, Channel 4 1996
In prison [Yasser Hussain] Nazir began to spin the police who came to see him a web of self-serving deception. He first named his accomplice a young woman called Marlene Thomas. ibid.
Nazir came up with yet another name. The name of someone else who shared the flat in Reading. That name was Jamil Chowdhary. ibid.
The killer just can’t be Chowdhary. ibid.
My name is Jamil Chowdhary and I am doing a life sentence for a murder I did not commit.
My story starts on 1 February 1991 when two men entered a shop at the Phoenix Green Filling Station, Hartley Wintney, Hampshire. Inside the shop Miss Sophie Ashworth was serving behind the counter and two boys, Raymond Kelly and Mathew Pollock were standing in front of the counter talking to her. O ne of the men stood at the cash desk whilst the second man, armed with a gun entered the shop and gave instructions to the two boys to get down on the floor. Whilst the robber was taking money from the till the gun was discharged. Raymond Kelly was shot in the back and sadly died.
The events were recorded on a 24-hour time lapse video recording from a camera mounted on the wall behind the counter in the filling station shop. It was the Prosecutions case that Mohammed Womiq Nazir was the robber and that I, Jamil Chowdhary was the gunman. Nazir was in prison on another charge just six weeks after the garage killing, awaiting trial for slashing a man whose house he’d broken into. He was interviewed in jail and hoping to do a deal on this charge, he hinted he could help the police with the Phoenix Green murder. In prison, Nazir started to spin a yarn of lies and deceit to the police. He first named his lover Marlene Thomas as his accomplice on the night of the murder. The next person Nazir falsely accused was my flatmate Rajinder Dhaliwal and when that didn’t work, he accused Rajinder’s Brother Abdul. Both of them had alibis. After a series of false accusations, Nazir came up with my name. He said that I was with him that night at the Phoenix Green Garage and that I was the gunman. He even accused me of another murder, which the police knew I hadn’t committed. When I was arrested 3 months later, I couldn't remember where I was on the night of the murder.
On the 2 April 1992, (At that time had been on remand for one year) I was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life, with a tarriff of Twenty Years. Mohammed Nazir pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to 12 years …
I have spent 12 years in 'Category A' conditions for a murder I did not commit. When I was in court, I heard so many lies told about me that you can imagine my disbelief and shock when I was found guilty and given a life sentence. There was no evidence against me only the word of Nazir and his girlfriend Mariene. If I had been tried on my own most of the evidence would not have been admissible. Nevertheless, because I was tried jointly with Nazir there were many witnesses who were called to give evidence against Nazir. Unfortunately through the back door, they also gave evidence against me. Unless I get back to trial, I can’t see me being released and that makes me very sad indeed. I try not to think about it and just hope and pray that one day the truth will come out and I will finally be released from this nightmare.
If there is anyone who knows about or knows of an expert in the field of advanced Imagery Analysis and Photogrammetry, Forensic Imagery, Mathematical technique of video recordings and is able to clarify methodology variations in clinical gait analysis. Could they please contact me? Jamil Chowdhary, letter written from HMP Longlartin 11th February 2002