Woman describes kidnap horror
A Durban woman is relieved that a close relative and his accomplices have been arrested after she was kidnapped and strangled.
Recalling her traumatic ordeal to The Witness, Sarika Bridgemohan said what started off a normal day filled with the excitement of moving into their new home, suddenly turned into a scene from a horror movie. On the day the incident unfolded in March, Bridgemohan said she and the relative had been staying at a hotel for some time but were finally moving out as he had purchased a new home for them, adding that they were going to sign legal documents and move in the same day. “He had lied to me about owning a house,” she said.
Bridgemohan said the only reason they stayed at the hotel was because her relative said he knew the owner personally and that he had let them stay there for free as it was convenient for him to work from there.
This was contrary to what the relative had told the Reaction Unit South Africa’s (Rusa) officers.
He had reportedly claimed that part of the reason he wanted to kill her was that he couldn’t continue maintaining her lifestyle.
He told Rusa that Bridgemohan insisted on staying at a five-star hotel almost daily for two years and cost him R300 000.
She said nothing could be further from the truth, as the hotel stays were his idea, adding that she was an independent woman who ran her own business. “[He] had no car of his own and used my car; I bought him clothes and cellphones.”
She said at one point she suggested they live separately so that her parents wouldn’t be burdened with providing food and shelter for the both of them, which was when he moved them to the hotel.
“When we stayed at the hotel, on many occasions money would go missing from my purse. When I confronted him about it, he wouldn’t have an answer.”
THE KIDNAPPING
According to Bridgemohan, on the afternoon of March 13, she and her relative drove around with all their belongings in their vehicle as they had moved out of the hotel and were expected to meet with a lawyer to sign documents for their new home and move in on that same day.
“We drove around aimlessly for hours until I asked him if he knew where we were going and if he could give me the location and address so I could put it in my phone GPS. He insisted he knew the place. We ended up driving to an isolated area and he parked behind another vehicle.”
She said her relative got out of the car and then said to the man in the other car “here is your money, make it quick”.
Soon after that she said, the man came out of that vehicle, opened her door and pulled her out. He started assaulting her and strangling her.
“I called for my relative’s help, I heard him instructing the man strangling me to hurry and finish.”
Bridgemohan said she doesn’t know what happened next. She regained consciousness in a sugarcane field near Ifafa Beach, on the South Coast. “He [the other man] thought I was dead. When I woke up he was shocked. He told me that my relative paid to have me killed.
“He was panicking and he needed a cigarette to calm himself down.”
Bridgemohan said that she got her chance to escape when her attacker went to a petrol station for cigarettes. He had asked her to stay down but she lied about being pregnant and convinced him to let her sit up straight, she said.
“When he left, I spotted three construction workers on the side of the road. When he started driving, I jumped out of the moving vehicle and I darted straight to those men and hugged one of them tightly, telling him that the man had kidnapped me. That is when a woman that was with the men came to my rescue. She drove me to her home and gave me a phone to call my family,” she said.
After the ordeal, she realised that R34 000 in cash had been transferred from her bank account around the same time as her kidnapping and assault.
She said though the ordeal happened in March, she was forced to take action and contact Rusa recently, after she started receiving death threats and harassing phone calls from her relative and a woman.
THE ARREST
A criminal case was registered at the Amanzimtoti SAPS.
On Tuesday, Rusa tracked down and arrested the relative, another man and a woman after receiving more than 100 tip-offs on their whereabouts. They were arrested at a house in Coffee Bay, Eastern Cape.
“They were hiding out at a oneroom home on a mountainside. The officers later recovered the silver Opel Corsa used to dump the victim’s body in rural Coffee Bay,” said Prem Balram of Rusa.
He said the man arrested was currently on parole for a double murder and several armed robberies. “He informed officers that he was forced to transport the body and was surprised when the victim came back to life. He added that she had jumped from the moving vehicle and he fled fearing arrest,” said Balram.
They are being detained at a police station in Coffee Bay.
KwaZulu-Natal police have not yet confirmed if the suspects have been transported back into the province and formally charged.