Johannesburg - Four-year-old Shivan Maharaj was on the back seat of the car his grandfather had locked and set alight.
The helpless little boy had no way of escaping his fate in the Toyota Camry in Azaadville, west of Joburg, on Wednesday.
This is according to a local security guard who believes those who came to douse the raging flames couldn’t see Shivan inside the car because he was hidden in the arms of his grandfather, Vugathial Persadh.
Desperate attempts by the guard, residents and the police to extinguish the fire were in vain.
The boy’s family sat outside their home in silence on Thursday.
A sombre atmosphere pervaded the chilly autumn air as relatives sat together in their grief, quietly trying to comprehend how the child’s life could have been so brutally taken.
While his parents went to identify his body, his paternal grandfather attended to a media gathering that tried to find out what could have led to the tragedy.
But the elderly man said the family was too distraught to talk about it.
The security guard, who did not want to be named, was left traumatised.
“I have seen and been through a lot in my life, but this is by far the worst thing I have experienced,” he said.
“While I was trying to put out the flames, I looked through the car’s window and the only thing I could see was the man’s leg burning.”
He said that during his patrol on that fateful afternoon, he had pulled up in the open veld, where the bottle-green car was parked.
“I didn’t notice anything odd about it, because people park there all the time.”
He left and continued patrolling the suburb. But shortly afterwards, he was told a car was on fire at the same spot.
“When I got there, I saw the car in flames and it was so powerful; there was nothing I could do to save the child,” he said.
In fact, he only became aware that a child had been in the car when police on the scene told him.
But the guard blamed the police, who he said had failed to alert local security organisations that they were searching for the child.
“If I knew they were looking for the boy, I could have saved him,” he said.
Gauteng police spokesman Lieutenant Kay Makhubela said the police had been searching for the man and they knew what car he was driving.
This was after the grandfather had called the boy’s father, warning him of his murderous intentions.
“The boy’s grandfather had phoned the father and told him he had the child and he was going to kill him and himself,” Makhubela said.
The child had been in the care of his grandfather and a domestic worker while his parents were at work.
The distraught father alerted the police, pleading with them to try to rescue the boy.
But the police were too late.
The murder has devastated the close-knit community.
Neighbours relayed their distress over the boy’s death.
Moonira Wadee, one of the neighbours, said she had known Persadh as “Hola” and described him as a “good and helpful man”.
“I knew him to be a good- hearted man, always ready to lend a helping hand,” she said.
Wadee said the boy and his grandfather were close and she had often seen them driving together.
But another neighbour, Ferdoze
Verachia, painted a different picture. “I heard the man and his son-in-law arguing the night before, but I could not hear what it was about. I can’t understand how this happened to an innocent child.”
The motive for the incident is unknown. Makhubela confirmed murder and inquest dockets had been opened.
The Star