JOIN USNew twist to killing of Indian-origin woman
Anni, 28, was found dead after she was abducted by two gunmen while travelling in a taxi along with her partner Shrien Dewani in Western Cape. The British couple flew into South Africa for their honeymoon. But the lavish £200,000 “marriage” they went through in Mumbai in November in the presence of 300 guests was never officially registered there or anywhere else, the Daily Mail reported on Saturday.
The newspaper said it has confirmed with the British high commission in India that the union was never registered, and therefore would not have been recognised in either Britain or Sweden. From his home in Sweden, Anni’s father said: “My wife and I are Anni’s closest relatives—not Shrien. She was not formally married to Shrien.”
“According to the authorities (in Britain and Sweden), Anni was still Miss Hindocha when she died. The marriage registration was not going to happen until March next year, when Anni had her birthday in Britain and they switched rings, which is our custom.”
A letter, sent this week to the Mail from people claiming to be Anni’s friends, asked troubling questions about Anni’s late-night abduction in a dangerous black township of Gugulethu, several miles from their Cape Town hotel.
Shrien said nine hours earlier he was thrown out of the “back window” of the same taxi at gunpoint and left, bewildered and alone, to sound the alarm.
One friend of Shrien, whom the couple invited in India, says: “It was a lavish event at an expensive hotel which has lawns running down to a lake. Everyone believed they were a couple made for each other.”
‘Anni unhappy’
On the flight back home to London, it appears the couple were not on speaking terms. A woman claiming to be an air hostess on the flight has said that Anni looked unhappy and was in tears.
People are asking two questions — could a grown man fit through the rear passengerwindow, as Shrien says he did? And having been through such an ordeal, how come his clothes were not torn, or his shoes dirtied?
A letter received by the Mail, and signed by “the devoted friends and acquaintances of our beloved Anni”, says she knew Nigeria and Kenya well, contradicting Shrien’s suggestion that she had never been to Africa before.
The letter, sent by post, was unsigned, but written in perfect English and typed out.
It adds: “We believe the South African investigation may be a whitewash, and Anni’s demise is highly mysterious.” Shrien, an accountant, has not been called back to South Africa by police to attend an identity parade of three local men who have now been charged with kidnap, robbery and murder.