Phone records produced in an attempt to prove wrestling and show promoter Shane Jaipal's alibi for the murder of which he is accused must have been falsified, a Durban judge heard on Friday.

Jaipal has pleaded not guilty to murdering his former lover, Argentina Loutsaris, by dousing her with petrol and setting her alight.

He produced the telephone records in an attempt to prove that Loutsaris phoned him twice on the evening of October 20, 1997 - the day before her death - and once on the morning of her murder.

According to the telephone records Jaipal produced, Loutsaris telephoned him at the University of the Transkei in Umtata about two hours before her murder on the Bluff.

Mr Justice Hillary Squires was due to give judgment on Friday, but instead called a Telkom expert to query the phone records given to the court by Jaipal's counsel, Chris Snyman, and those handed in by state advocate Santhos Manilall. The state's exhibit does not record any of the calls registered on the document produced by Jaipal.

Telkom's senior manager of billing operations, Albert Munnik, said Telkom's only explanation for the differences between the two documents was that the document produced by Jaipal was compiled by someone who extracted the registered calls from another Telkom customer's account and "edited" them on to the document.

Munnik said the calls listed on Jaipal's document did not exist on the Telkom system, which recorded every call made by subscribers.

Snyman asked for an adjournment so that the defence could consult its own expert. The hearing was postponed to July 17.

With acknowledgements to Sue Blaine and Independent Online.