A police witness has told a Bombay court that an inadequate police investigation into Dr. Asha Goel's brutal slaying in India three years ago let suspects slip through authorities' fingers for years.

Interviewed in Vancouver, Dr. Goel's son Sanjay told Johnathan Woodward of The Globe and Mail that Inspector Jaywald Hargude of the Bombay Crime Branch has advised the court that police did

not properly secure confessions, did not use the interrogation techniques available to them and watched their main suspect die of natural causes.

"With all the humility at my command, I submit that whilst the investigation was with the Malabar Hill Police Station, certain vital aspects of the matter were not adequately investigated," Insp. Hargude wrote in a court filing.

Dr. Goel, who at the time of her death was chief obstetrician at Headwaters Health Care Centre, was killed during a visit to her homeland to help end a family feud about a $5-million inheritance from her father. Days after she met other members of the family, her battered body was found in her brother Suresh Agrawal's apartment.

Insp. Hargude's police branch picked up the investigation years later, and has alleged that the homicide was the work of Suresh and another brother, Subhash Agrawal, a Canadian citizen living in Ottawa.

Sanjay Goel, a Vancouver businessman, says

Insp. Hargude's statement is an admission that the standards of pursuing justice for Canadians in foreign countries can be frighteningly lax.

He said Canadian officials should have been involved in the investigation, but the family was informed early on that a slaying in India fell under the jurisdiction of Indian authorities.

In a letter to the family two months after Dr. Goel's death, RCMP liaison officer Yves Goupil described the Indian investigation as "progressing slowly but surely,"

"My mother was Canadian, but Canada handled the case as if it was just

an Indian problem," said Sanjay, who with his father have hired private investigators and spent more than $500,000 and taken about 20 trips to spur the investigation.

Insp. Hargude's police branch took over the case, and a suspect in its custody confessed his role to a magistrate last September.

It turned out that police records show the man had previously confessed to the local police.

In the four subsequent months, police arrested and called for charges against four men accused of beating Dr. Goel to death. Police also accused two of her three brothers of hatching a conspiracy to murder her.

Suresh died in November 2003, barely three months after Dr. Goel was killed. Sanjay Goel said lawyers for Subhash have said in court he is too sick to travel to India from Ottawa for questioning.

"If I am able to solve this case after two years, it is difficult to imagine that they were unable to solve the murder right away," Insp. Hargude told the court. The explanation he offered was that the local detachment simply did not have the skills to work on such a "difficult" case.

Expressing surprise at the attention Dr. Goel's murder has received in Canadian media, the police witness suggested the reason was Canada's relatively low homicide rate. "You don't have many

crimes in Canada. In India, we have lots of murders, lots of crimes. People do not feel grievous about it."