Khusbu Shah murder trial: Accused's number same as one used for taxi, court told

Roshan Dantis, 30, is accused of attacking Khusbu Shah, the 21-year-old wife of his university friend, with a meat cleaver in Glasgow on June 1.

Mrs Shah's dismembered body was later discovered dumped in some bushes behind the street in which she lived in Dennistoun.

The murder trial at the High Court in Glasgow has heard how her husband of six years Nagendra Shah, 32, received a text message from her mobile phone to say she had been kidnapped along with a demand for 120,000.

Today the jury was shown the telephone records of Dantis' wife Astrid which featured text messages sent to her partner.

The messages were sent to two mobile numbers, one of which matched that used to call a taxi to Mrs Shah's home in Coventry Drive, picking up from the accused's flat in Garthland Drive on June 1.

Glasgow Taxis received a call from the same number several hours later to book a return trip, the court heard.

The caller gave the name Abdul.

Prosecutor Dorothy Bain asked mobile phone analyst Michael Dickson: "The same number is recorded against Roshan Dantis in his wife's phone?"

The witness, who works for the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, replied: "Yes."

Mother-of-one Mrs Shah studied at Glasgow Caledonian University. She married her husband in Nepal in 2003 and lived in Britain for four years.

Mr Shah has told the trial how he became friends with Dantis after they met on a business course at Strathclyde University.

Dantis is accused of murdering Mrs Shah in her home and severing her head and hands with a cleaver.

He is further accused of attempting to defeat the ends of justice by disposing of her body in a holdall in some bushes on Coventry Drive and dumping her head and hands in plastic bags on a railway embankment along with his clothes and the alleged weapon.

It is also alleged that Dantis tried to extort 120,000 and a television from Mr Shah.

Dantis denies all the charges in the trial before Lord Pentland.