Review under way into murder case ‘collusion’ claims

July 25, 2024 at 12:19 pm

Michael Ross became a suspect for the murder of Shamsuddin Mahmood in 1994, when he was a teenager. It was in 2008, after a new evidence emerged, that he was put on trial and found guilty of the crime. Now 45, he continues to maintain his innocence.

Scotland’s police watchdog is now looking into how the force has responded to allegations of corruption, and other complaints, in the case of convicted soldier Michael Ross.

In 2008, the Black Watch sergeant was found guilty of murdering Bangladeshi waiter Shamsuddin Mahmood at Kirkwall’s Mumutaz Indian Restaurant on June 2, 1994.

After Ross was convicted for the crime, which occurred when he was 15 years old, his father Eddy alleged that the case had been brought to trial by a “conspiracy to concoct evidence.”

Two official complaints have been made to Northern Constabulary/Police Scotland alleging that the key prosecution witness had been coerced into giving evidence, and both times the force has claimed that there is no proof to support the accusations.

The most recent complaint about the murder investigation, spanning 360-pages, was submitted by the Justice 4 Michael Ross (J4MR) campaign group in June 2022.

It alleged there to have been “confirmation bias, media manipulation, gross incompetence, and, latterly, corruption in the police investigation, resulting in the wrongful conviction of Michael Alexander Ross.”

When Police Scotlands professional standards department responded in December 2023, it said it would not be “proportionate” to probe the case in depth. It did not uphold any of the allegations.

Now, J4MR has successfully appealed the matter to the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner (PIRC). The PIRC cannot reinvestigate the complaints, but the commissioner can review how the force has responded to them, and recommend further enquiries take place, if it is deemed necessary.

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