Wife killer ‘forced to confess’
Says he feared police assaults
AMAN convicted of hiring a hitman to murder his wife in a staged hijacking claims he was forced into making a confession.
Rajiv Sewnarain, who denies playing any role in the death of his wife, Shanaaz, was sentenced to life imprisonment in December 2010.
Yesterday he launched a review application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court to have both his conviction and sentence – handed down by Durban Regional Court magistrate Sharon Marks on December 22, 2010 – set aside and for a new trial to commence. The State is opposing the application.
The application was expected to be heard before Judge Kevin Swain yesterday. However he said he could not make a proper decision based on the papers before him, because the State had failed to obtain affidavits from “two of the major role-players whose evidence goes to the heart of the case”.
Judge Swain ordered that the matter be adjourned to allow for the State to obtain the affidavits of the magistrate to whom Sewnarain deposed his confession, as well as the attorney – identified only as D Moodley – who represented Sewnarain when he pleaded guilty to his wife’s murder.
Judge Swain said these affidavits were critical in the court arriving at a fair and just decision. The review was adjourned to July 30.
Before Sewnarain’s confession, the truck repair company owner told police that the rented car he and his wife were travelling in had been hijacked. He said he had been pushed from the car, but his wife had been abducted by the hijackers. Shanaaz’s body had subsequently been found in the abandoned car in Folweni.
Later, Shanaaz’s family heard in court that the murder had been set up to look like a botched hijacking.
In his affidavit yesterday, Sewnarain said that when he was in hospital, he had learned that his wife was dead.
Following surgery to remove the bullet from his shoulder on December 17, 2010, he was arrested and taken to Isipingo police station where he alleges he was repeatedly assaulted and interrogated.
Sewnarain said Warrant Officer Viresh Panday had accused him of killing his wife because he was having an affair. He said Panday had told him he knew Sewnarain had asked a man named Boxer to hire a hitman called Vaughn “China” Oliver to kill his wife and that he also knew Sewnarain had planned an earlier hijacking, which his wife survived.
“Panday told me Boxer and China had admitted their complicity with me in the murder of my wife and there was no point in denying it because of the overwhelming evidence against me,” said Sewnarain.
He said he had still been mourning his wife and had been terrified of another assault. “I therefore submissively accepted what Panday was telling me.”
It had been in this indifferent mental state that he had made a confession to the magistrate at Panday’s insistence, Sewnarain said. Sewnarain said he did recall pleading guilty to the charge of murder.
“When I pleaded guilty, I was not in my sound and sober senses,” Sewnarain said.
“I was on medication which made me tired and drowsy and I was not fit to stand trial. I was unduly influenced by Panday to plead guilty.”