Life for killer Kandasamy
HE SOUGHT to portray himself as a loving family man, but Mogamberry “Rajan” Kandasamy was on Tuesday found to be the vicious killer who wiped out his.
Four years after his wife Varsha, 41, daughter Melarisa, 18, and son Megandren, 17, were brutally battered with a Hanuman mace at their Chatsworth home, Kandasamy, 44, was convicted in the Durban High Court of their murders.
The former chain store merchandiser was given three life sentences, despite the best attempts of his attorney, Siven Samuel, to sway the court towards a lesser sentence.
Describing his client, who was in a troubled marriage, as a loving father and husband who “lived for his family”, Samuel said the idea of divorcing his wife was not something he could accept.
“Everybody wants to kill their wives once a week, but not their children,” he said during mitigation of sentence, drawing gasps from the gallery.
Judge Shyam Gyanda said Kandasamy, who looked on blankly during the proceedings, had not only misled the court about who was responsible for the December 29, 2013 murders, but had also shown no remorse.
His duty as a father was to nurture and protect his children, he said, but he had robbed them of their lives.
The judge said the attack was planned and premeditated.
“The attack was particularly brutal. This was a very personal assault, directed to the heads.”
The attitude that “once you marry a woman, she is your property is an attitude of the dark ages”, he added.
After he was arrested, Kandasamy spent a month at Fort Napier psychiatric hospital in Pietermaritzburg and was found fit to stand trial.
The bloodbath occurred after Kandasamy and his wife returned home after a night out.
He claimed his family were murdered during a robbery after he had left the house.
Last July he denied making a statement to two Chatsworth policemen in which he took responsibility.
Passing judgment, Judge Gyanda said Kandasamy had not asked after his family when police found him after he fled the scene, as a loving father and husband would have done.
He rejected Kandasamy’s version that the family were robbed, saying robbers were unlikely to steal a mace from a temple in the house.
The judge also dismissed claims that police had told Kandasamy that he had consumed whisky and tablets on the day of the murders.
“Why would police give him a way out? It is highly improbable that police would give him that information.”
However, police photographs showed the opened bottle of whisky and the tablets.
Judge Gyanda also rejected Kandasamy’s claims that he had no recollection of what had transpired that night. Prosecutor Bonga Mbokazi said the manner in which the children died showed that Kandasamy was a man who only thought about himself.
Varsha’s family were in court yesterday and appeared happy with the verdict. Her only sister, Vanessa Chetty, said justice had been done. She sobbed as she told POST about the tragedy, saying her only niece and nephew “had a lot to live for”.
Varsha’s 20-year marriage, she said, had been “very volatile” and she was to have commenced with divorce proceedings. However she was murdered a month before..