Matters against the 45-year-old, who cannot be named, were mentioned in Bathurst Local Court this week before magistrate Michael Allen.

The man was already facing manslaughter and recklessly causing grievous bodily harm charges.

On Monday police added murder, strictly indictable, to the list.

The man was charged in relation to the toddler’s death last year following an investigation by police attached to Chifley local area command.

Police and ambulance officers were called to a house in Cunynghame Street in Oberon at around 3pm on August 3 last year where they found the toddler unconscious and not breathing.

Officers performed CPR on the boy before he was airlifted to Westmead Children’s Hospital in a critical condition. He died three days later.

At the man’s bail hearing in September last year, Mr Allen commented at the time that in his 30-year involvement in the judicial system he had never seen allegations so abhorrent in their nature.

Among the injuries suffered by the child were intra-ocular bleeding, detached retinas, blood in his neck and his brain which possibly caused his cardiac arrest, a distended abdomen, compressions in the eighth, ninth, 10th and 11th vertebrae and possibly a severed vertebrae – none of which were consistent with the explanation offered to police by the accused and a co-accused following the three-year-old’s death.

The man has yet to enter a plea to the charges against him.

Bail was not applied for and was formally refused with his matters adjourned to Bathurst Local Court on August 17.