Cautionary tale of sex, drugs and death

A lengthy legal tussle over a law student’s death at a year-end party sounds a sobering warning on the eve of annual displays of youthful recklessness.

As thousands of matriculants invaded premier Rage venues this weekend, the family of Sarisha Chauhan are preparing to mark the fourth anniversary of her death, at the age of 21, at a New Year’s Eve rave.

Party drugs LSD and Ecstasy are the focus of the Chauhan case: her boyfriend, Taariq Phillips, claims he had been experimenting with drugs when they had intense sex, during which he strangled her. But the state has charged him with rape and murder.

Phillips is set to petition the Supreme Court of Appeal after the High Court in Cape Town dismissed his application to compel the state to accept his plea of guilty on the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

Phillips, then 23, said he, Chauhan and friends attended a rave in Paarl.

His affidavit reads: “I was not a regular drug user at the time and was merely experimenting with it . . . [Chauhan] and I then decided to leave the Rage party and go to our tent . . . Both of us were in a very sexually aroused state. We made very intense love that day.”

He said he held her around her neck.

“I did not at all intend to strangle her but in this process of holding her around her neck . . . it caused oxygen to be severed from her brain which caused her to convulse and which led to her condition as the paramedics found her.

“I will have to live with the knowledge that our demonstrations of love towards each other that day ended in such a tragic manner due to my actions in a state of overexcitedness.”

Phillips asked for a five-year prison sentence, suspended for five years. He said he was a devout Muslim, had a full-time job and that he and Chauhan had intended to marry.

The state rejected his plea because it said he failed to provide full details of what happened in the tent and Chauhan’s mother was “dissatisfied” with the explanation.

Eric Ntabazalila, spokesman for the NPA in the Western Cape, dismissed Phillips’s applications as delaying tactics.

According to the state, Chauhan fell sick while dancing with friends after taking drugs. She was taken to the tent she shared with Phillips, who was with her “at all times”.

Court documents say: “Approximately an hour later [Phillips] called for assistance and [Chauhan] was observed in the tent, naked and appearing to be experiencing a fit.”

Phillips’s lawyer, Greg Duncan, confirmed this week that he would petition the SCA and declined to comment further.