A respected pharmacist murdered his elderly father at their £1.3million luxury home by mixing stolen morphine into a fruit smoothie before injecting him with insulin as he slept, a court today.

Bipin Desai watched a football match on TV before pouring the painkiller into a drink for his 85-year-old father whose body was later found at their detached house in the Surrey stockbroker belt.

Desai, 59, who shared the home with his father Dhirajlal in Dockenfield, near Farnham, checked on him five minutes after kissing him goodnight and then injected him with insulin as he slept.

Today he faced a trial at Guildford Crown Court on a charge of murder, which he denies. The jury has been told he admits assisting in a suicide and two charges of theft by an employee.

William Boyce QC, prosecuting, said Desai at first hoped to disguise the killing as a natural death and went through the facade of making his father breakfast the next morning, which he left out for him.

When he returned home from work at the pharmacy he once owned, he made the fake 'discovery' that his father had died in his sleep and phoned 999.

But when he realised a post-mortem examination would take place on his father's body - because he had not seen a British doctor for six months - Desai went into a police station, with his wife Dipti and two sons Samir and Nichil, and told officers he helped his father commit suicide.

His father had lived in Zambia before moving to stay with family in Zimbabwe and then eventually moving in with his son in the village of Dockenfield in February 2015.  Mr Boyce told the jury that a 20ml bottle of concentrated morphine solution Oramorph was ordered by the Vaughan James Pharmacy, in Farnham - where Desai worked - on February 20, 2015 and delivered the next day.

'Pharmacy records show the defendant was the responsible person on duty on February 20 when the bottle was ordered and was the responsible person when the bottle of Oramorph was delivered,' said Mr Boyce.

'This bottle is not something the pharmacy normally ordered, it's very strong. All controlled drugs recorded at the pharmacy should be recorded in the controlled drug register.'

He added: 'There was no recording. Rohit Patel [both corr], the pharmacy owner, was not aware that Oramophy had been ordered or received.'

Mr Boyce told the jury that on August 26, Desai's wife and two sons had gone to London leaving him alone with his father, after he returned from a Pilates class.

'However, several messages were exchanged between Desai and his son Nichil about Manchester United's 4-0 victory over FC Brugge that night,' he added.