Thaindian News

London, Nov 16 (IANS) Indian-origin millionaire Shrien Dewani, whose wife was killed during their honeymoon in South Africa, has said the assailants kept saying: “We are not going to hurt you.”

Anni Dewani, 28, and her husband 31-year-old Shrien had left a restaurant with a driver in a car when they were hijacked by two gunmen near Cape Town. The assailants forced out the driver and drove off with the newlyweds inside.

About an hour later, the gunmen stopped and threw out Shrien.

A police team spotted the vehicle abandoned two miles away in the township of Khayelitsha near Cape Town. Anni’s blood-soaked body was found on the back seat.

“The men kept saying, ‘We are not going to hurt you. We just want the car’. That was a lie,” The Sun quoted Shrien as saying.

He said that they begged their kidnappers to dump them together. But that didn’t happen.

Shrien said: “I don’t want to go into detail about what happened during the attack, because I will probably start crying. But they were so cold. They put a gun in my ear and pulled back the trigger - it really was the stuff of movies.

“Most of the conversation was us pleading to be dumped together. I held on to Anni as I said to them ‘Look, if you’re not going to hurt her, let us go’.”

A devastated Shrien said they decided to venture outside the tourist areas at Anni’s suggestion.

“Anni grew up in Sweden, and she felt as if the area around the hotel was like at home, so clean and safe, and maybe a bit sterile. She had never been to Africa before, so she suggested that we should have a look at the ‘real Africa’.”

The couple headed for a township restaurant when they were abducted.

Ziyanda Rongo, a local, saw police personnel arrive to check the car after it had been abandoned.

“When they opened the door there was so much blood it flooded out, it made them jump back,” Rongo was quoted as saying.