Thaindian News

Cape Town, Dec 4 (ANI): Two of the three arrested men accused of murdering Anni Dewani, the Brit-Indian honeymooner shot dead in South Africa last month, have claimed that they were physically assaulted by police to make a confession.

The Telegraph quoted the lawyer of 23-year-old Xolile Mngeni has alleged that he was “tortured”, and suffocated with a plastic bag before signing an apparent confession of involvement in the Cape Town killing last month.

Another of the accused, Mzwamadoda Qwabe, 26, has alleged that he was punched and kicked by a group of police officers as he was arrested in a township a few days after the murder.

The duo, from the Khayelitsha township near Cape Town, were arrested shortly after the killing while the couple’s taxi driver Zola Tongo was also subsequently implicated, the paper said.

All three have been charged with murder and kidnap and a court has heard that Tongo is considering entering a plea bargain deal with prosecutors, it added.

However lawyers for the other two accused have said that would lodge complaints of abuse against the police.

Vusi Tshabalala, representing Mngeni said his client had been beaten and suffocated with a plastic bag, adding: “While being tortured they asked him questions to extract information from him. They subsequently got him to sign a statement … for now I am assuming that it must be a statement or a confession, I haven’t seen it yet.

Thabo Nogemane, representing Qwabe’s case, said that his client was watching a football match in an informal shebeen bar when police turned up to arrest him on November 17.

Twenty-eight-year-old Anni was shot dead when she and her new husband Shrien were hijacked by robbers as their taxi drove through a notorious township in Cape Town. Shrien was released unharmed. (ANI)