A police hunt has been launched for missing evidence in one of Scotland’s most notorious murder cases. Eight documents and productions relating to the original police probe into the killing of waiter Shamsuddin Mahmood are unaccounted for.
Michael Ross is serving a life term for shooting Mahmood in the Mumutaz Indian restaurant in Kirkwall, Orkney, in 1994. Last month, a review of the case was ordered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), raising the possibility of Ross’s conviction being overturned and a fresh trial ordered.
Files missing after trial
Fifty-nine files were originally reported lost, but 51 have since been located, with eight still unaccounted for. Police Scotland is believed to be carrying out a review on whether it should report itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office over the handling of the files.
A force spokeswoman said: “Following enquiries the majority of the documents and productions have been recovered and work remains ongoing to recover the outstanding eight.”
It is understood that the documents went missing following Ross’s High Court trial in 2008, when they should have been returned to the police. They were located in an archive used by the Crown Office, which had prosecuted the case. The force has not provided details about the eight files that remain missing.
Case background
However, they are thought to contain personal data and sensitive information from the original investigation. It is also not known how the lost files could affect any future review of the case or what details they contain.
Suspicion first fell on Ross when he was identified as a male seen wearing a balaclava in woods around two weeks before the murder. At the time, he was 15 and an army cadet. However, the case went cold, and Ross was not charged at the time due to a lack of evidence.
Twelve years later, new evidence came from local man William Grant, who told police he had seen Ross on the evening of the murder wearing a balaclava and handling a gun in toilets near the crime scene. Grant also claimed he witnessed the youth shouting racial abuse outside the restaurant weeks before the murder.
Conviction and aftermath
Former Black Watch sergeant Ross was found guilty in 2008 at the High Court in Glasgow of shooting Shamsuddin. As he was about to be led away, Ross knocked over a security guard and jumped out of the dock. He pulled open a side door but was eventually stopped in a court corridor. The following day, a hire car was found parked in a supermarket car park in Springburn.
Inside was a cache of weapons including a loaded machine gun, hundreds of rounds of ammo, a grenade and a hunting knife. The following month, trial judge Lord Hardie sentenced Ross to life in jail. He was told he must serve 25 years before he can be considered for parole and had five years added for the escape attempt. The judge described the crime as a “vicious, evil, unprovoked murder of a defenceless man” motivated by “extreme racist prejudice”.
Shamsuddin’s brother, Abul Shafuddin, welcomed the verdict and sentence. It is not known what new evidence has been presented to the SCCRC.
Appeals and representation
A previous bid by Ross to have the case reviewed by them was rejected in 2014. However, there have been previous question marks over whether police interviews with the boy should have been admissible as evidence. Ross has been represented by Sheku Bayoh lawyer Aamer Anwar since 2019. The human rights campaigner has said Ross is the victim of a miscarriage of justice and there is no evidence to show that he carried out the murder.
In an interview with our weekly podcast Criminal Record last year, Anwar said: “It strikes me as incredible that a 15-year-old boy could walk into a restaurant with a balaclava on, walk directly up to an individual, shoot them at point-blank range and then walk out and leave nothing of themselves.”
He also raised concerns that Ross was interviewed in 1994 about the murder by police without a lawyer present and described Mr Grant’s evidence “fanciful”. He added: “There must be people on the island who know much more than they knew at the time.”
Ross has tried to break out of prison three times since his murder conviction, the last effort in 2018. Then he tried to scale the perimeter fence of an exercise yard at Shotts in Lanarkshire using a homemade ladder. A hi-vis jacket he was wearing was searched and found to contain food, clothing and a toothbrush. Ross, 48, now a prisoner at HMP Grampian in Peterhead, was sentenced to two more years. He said the bid was to draw attention to his bid to prove his innocence.
