A former university professor allegedly designed a “fake” animal experiment in Hong Kong to produce lethal gas to kill his estranged wife nine years ago by releasing it from a yoga ball in her car, a court rehearing has heard.

Malaysian Khaw Kim Sun, 60, was behind the “deliberate” and “calculated” killings of his wife Wong Siew Fing, 47, and their daughter Lily Khaw Li Ling, 16, who died after inhaling lethal amounts of carbon, prosecutors said on Thursday. Monoxide inside a yellow Mini Cooper on May 22, 2015.

Khaw, formerly an associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and senior medical officer at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin, faces a retrial in the High Court after winning an appeal against his conviction on the grounds that he was not sentenced. initially a fair hearing.

On the second day of opening statements, deputy director of prosecution Jonathan Man Tak-ho said Khaw, a former anesthesiologist, obtained carbon monoxide under the guise of an experiment using oxygen to resuscitate gas-poisoned rabbits.

Man said a medical expert would be called to testify that the research in question had “little scientific and clinical value.”

“The prosecution says this was a fake experiment to produce the lethal gas carbon monoxide,” he told the jury of four men and three women.