adminSukulwenkosi Dube Plumtree Correspondent
FOUR family members allegedly hanged their six-year-old step-brother as they were against his mother’s marriage to their father.
The Ndebele family members Michael, 29, Knowledge, 26, Quinator, 34, and Quite, 31, were arrested following the disappearance and subsequent murder of their step-brother Tumeliso Ndlovu in March this year.
They were later released as police intended to carry out further investigations, but once freed they all fled to Botswana. However, Quiet was arrested on Monday evening after being deported from Botswana along with her six children for illegal migration.
She was intercepted by police at Maitengwe Border Post and taken into custody.
She appeared before Plumtree magistrate Gideon Ruvetsa on Tuesday charged with murder and was remanded in custody to August 8.
Prosecuting, Jane Phiri said Ndebele and three other family members who are still on the run murdered the six-year-old boy.
“Ndebele on March 17 kidnapped Tumeliso while he was coming from school and with the assistance of three unidentified people carried out this ghastly murder,” said Phiri.
On the day he was kidnapped, Tumeliso was on his way from school in the company of two other classmates. He met a woman in a bushy area who called out his name and ordered him to follow her to collect some sweets and money from her homestead. He complied.
The boy did not report home on that day and his family spent two days searching for him.
Tumeliso was allegedly severely assaulted and locked up for two days in a bid by the Ndebele siblings to punish their father for wedding another woman.
The boy was later hanged on a tree.
A neighbour found Tumeliso’s body hanging and rushed to alert his family. The boy’s body was swollen and he had injuries indicating that he had been assaulted. Tumeliso was doing Grade One at a local school.
Ndebele and her siblings are said to have been continuously threatening Tumeliso’s mother for refusing to leave their father’s homestead.
They allegedly also accused their stepmother of being behind the separation of their father and mother who they claimed was now suffering.
The family members also accused their father who works in South Africa of neglecting them in favour of Tumeliso and his mother.
derick.khumalo