Murder accused Rameez Patel sat next to his lawyer instead of in the dock as he was “assisting” an expert witness to go through video footage during his trial in the Limpopo High Court in Polokwane yesterday.
Patel is on trial for the murder of his wife Fatima in 2015.
It is alleged that the couple had argued over Patel’s extramarital affairs before he allegedly shot and killed her at their Nirvana home.
Patel’s defence lawyer Meschack Thipe led video evidence through the testimony of retired top cop Bushie Engelbrecht.
Engelbrecht went through video footage from the entrance of the residential complex where Patel lived with his wife.
The footage had previously been brought before the court by the state but the defence is trying to show that other vehicles had entered the complex in an attempt to prove Patel’s argument that Fatima was killed by intruders.
It was Patel who scrolled through the video evidence on his personal laptop.
Judge Joseph Raulinga said the idea of Patel being the one assisting the witness to go through the video made him uncomfortable.
Raulinga instructed Thipe to find someone else with a different machine to assist.
Earlier in the day, Raulinga had complained that the trial had taken too long and the case was always surrounded by strange occurrences after proceedings were delayed by load-shedding and the disappearance of the stenographer.
“This court has got a bad omen. Every time we sit something happens,” Raulinga said.
Raulinga also complained that the case had been on the roll for five years, adding that he had been trying to wrap it up sooner.
“I am disappointed that this matter is not coming to an end. But I want to put it on record that I am not responsible for the delays,” he said.
A string of violent family deaths followed after Patel’s wife was murdered, starting with his mother Mahejeen Banu Patel, 51, who was shot and killed in the presence of her domestic worker in 2017.
Patel was arrested in connection with his mother’s murder in 2017. It was suspected that he had played a hand in his mother’s murder after she confronted him about murdering Fatima. At the time his mother was killed, Patel was out on R250,000 bail in connection with Fatima’s murder case.
The charges against him for his mother’s killing were provisionally withdrawn due to lack of evidence.
Patel’s father Firoz was also later shot and killed in a robbery while his brother Razeen, who previously testified against Patel, was also shot in Mankweng but survived the attack.
Patel was never linked to the cases involving his father and brother. In his testimony, Razeen had told the court that Patel confessed to murdering Fatima.
mahopoz@sowetan.co.za
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