The man found guilty of murdering his girlfriend Pakeeza Yusuf, and her three-year-old daughter 'Jojo' has been sentenced to life in prison with a minimum non-parole period of 21 years.
Kamal Reddy killed the pair in 2006 and buried their bodies under a motorway bridge on Auckland's North Shore.
This morning, harrowing victim impact statements from Pakeeza Yusuf's mother and aunt were read to the court -- both saying their lives will never be the same.
Yusuf's mother Rojina Banu says she became worried when she didn't hear from her daughter and travelled to New Zealand to look for her. She says it was the worst day of her life when police told her what had happened.
"It confirmed my very worst fear -- at that moment I felt like I had lost everything," she told the court.
Mrs Banu told the court her health has worsened since her daughter and granddaughter's disappearance. She said she's depressed, can't sleep, and has been admitted to hospital "more times than I can count".
She said she suffers from terrible flashbacks.
"I still struggle to get this image out of my head. I didn't have to see their lifeless bodies; I had to see their skeletons."
A statement from Pakeeza Yusuf's aunt, Sabina Mubarak-Banu, was also read to the court. In it she said Pakeeza and Jojo deserved to live happy lives.
"We've lost two beautiful souls and that's a loss that can never be recovered."
Last month, after four-and-a-half hours of deliberations, a jury at the High Court in Auckland concluded the 42-year-old was guilty of the murders.
As each of the verdicts were read out, those in the public gallery sat silently. A number of them were related to the victims and had sat through every day of the three-week trial.
Ms Yusuf and her daughter were last heard from in late 2006, but a missing persons inquiry was only launched around seven years later.
Ms Yusuf's mother said they last spoke on the phone around Christmas in 2006. She told the court her daughter was distressed at the time.
It wasn't until early 2013 that a missing persons investigation began, after Ms Yusuf's mother contacted police.
In the following months, after analysing bank records, police identified Kamal Reddy as a suspect and launched a significant undercover operation.
Reddy joined undercover officers in a series of "simulated criminal scenarios" during that time, and it was near the end of that operation that he confessed to carrying out the murders, describing how he did it and where he buried the bodies.
He told an undercover officer in late 2006 that Ms Yusuf had told him to "go home from my life". Then, while she was sleeping, he took the electrical cord from an iron and strangled her to death.
Afterwards, he went into the room where Jojo was sleeping and smothered her with a pillow.
In search of a place to bury the bodies, Reddy put them into the boot of his car and drove south to Auckland's Bombay Hills.
Unable to find somewhere, he turned up at the house of his uncle, Bal Naidu, and asked for help.
Mr Naidu, who was a construction worker at a site on Auckland's North Shore at the time, took Reddy to an area which is today known as the Takapuna Landing Bridge and pointed out two locations.
Reddy went on to dig a hole as deep as his own height and put the bodies inside before covering it back up with stones and dirt.
The bodies laid undiscovered for nearly seven years. Naidu was later convicted on a charge of being an accessory after the fact to murder.
"Reddy must have thought he got away with murder," Crown prosecutor Natalie Walker told the jury in her closing arguments.
"And if it not for two comprehensive police investigations in 2013 and 2014 into the disappearance of this mother and daughter, he would have."
The undercover aspect of that operation lasted six months. Reddy was befriended by undercover officers, and eventually admitted his guilt.
"No blood, 'cause I just used the [electrical cord from the] table iron. That's all. Just tighten it," he told undercover officers in covert video evidence presented to the jury.
"She's gone and then I go for the daughter."
Under further questioning he even described the location where he buried the bodies.
"Take her body and dump it where the new bridge was [being made on the] North Shore."
Reddy told undercover cops the grave took him all night to dig. He said there were no cameras in the area and he even left up the bonnet of his car so it would appear to any passers-by as if he'd simply broken down.
Police later began excavations at the site and found the bodies buried side by side in a deep hole, covered in stones and dirt, just as Reddy had described.
The defence told the court the undercover operation used "trickery and deceit" and that Reddy's confession was false -- made under immense pressure.
Reddy also gave evidence in his own defence, arguing Ms Yusuf had a new partner called "James" and it was he who was the real killer -- but the jury did not buy his story.
Newshub.
