Body theft suspects released
THREE Umbilo police officers are in hot water after suspects were arrested and released without being charged in connection with the theft of a corpse.
Provincial police spokesperson Colonel Thembeka Mbele said yesterday an internal investigation into the conduct of the officers was under way.
The Daily News understands that three officers were blamed for the release of the suspects. Two of them had arrested the suspects, and the third was at the charge office.
The two officers had responded to a call from BJ Funeral Services, which alerted them to a body theft scam allegedly perpetrated by a funeral parlour worker and three women, who allegedly pretended to be relatives of a deceased person. The incident happened last Thursday.
The Daily News was present when two suspects allegedly confessed to committing the crime before their arrest.
BJ Funeral Services owner Muzi Hlengwa, the complainant, said it was arranged that the police would take the suspects and he would follow them to a police station to open a case of body theft and fraud.
Hlengwa said that to his surprise, when he got to the station the suspects had already been released, adding that when he asked how that had happened there was no clear answer, and so he called the station commander.
He said the commander, that night, went to see the body himself at the parlour, and that he told him the police officers were in the wrong because they had not made an entry in the occurrence book.
The suspects had allegedly confessed that they were approached by another funeral parlour owner to help him get the body so he could claim money from an insurance company. A worker at a funeral parlour in Isipingo allegedly agreed to release a body to the parlour owner, and the deceased was taken to BJ Funeral Services in Turners Road near Berea Centre.
He had asked BJ Funeral Services to use its storage facility, and said he would collect the body soon. Tthe body was brought there on Tuesday, and on Wednesday three women arrived and identified the deceased as their relative. They then processed documents, including a death certificate, but Hlengwa said they did not behave like beareaved family members.
The problem started on Thursday when an employee from the Isipingo parlour arrived and allegedly confessed that the body had been stolen and the deceased was not the person on the death certificate issued to the women.