London - The distraught family of murdered bride Anni Hindocha on Monday said the unanswered questions about her husband’s actions would haunt them forever.
They spoke as Shrien Dewani was dramatically cleared of murdering Anni during the couple’s honeymoon in South Africa.
The millionaire businessman was freed after a judge halted his trial. He had not even had to testify.
Judge Jeanette Traverso ruled that the evidence against him was “riddled with contradictions”. But she said it was “regrettable” that so many things remained unclear surrounding the murder of Anni, who was shot in a staged hijacking as she was driven through a notorious township four years ago.
Anni’s family fled Cape Town’s high court as the ruling was announced, and later wept as they declared: “The justice system has failed us.” Her father Vinod has pledged to sue Dewani for not revealing his homosexuality and leading his daughter and the family into a marriage that was a sham.
Dewani, 34, remained impassive as he was formally told he was not guilty before briefly returning to the court cells where he took a selfie of himself with police officer on a mobile phone, witnesses said.
The whole family are expected to return to their home in Bristol in the next couple of days as soon as Dewani leaves the South African psychiatric hospital where he has been held since losing his four-year extradition battle earlier this year.
On the court steps, Anni’s sister Ami Denborg wept as she said: “The justice system has failed us. We came here looking for answers and we came here looking for the truth and all we got was more questions.
“We never heard the full story of Shrien. We heard that Shrien has a led double life and that Anni knew nothing about it.
“The knowledge of not ever knowing what happened to my dearest little sister on the 13th November 2010 is going to haunt me, my family, my brother, my parents for the rest of our lives.”
Dewani, who admitted sleeping with gay prostitutes during his courtship of Anni, was accused of plotting with taxi driver Zola Tongo to arrange for two hitmen to kill his new wife a fortnight after they married at a £200 000 wedding in India.
Tongo, gunman Mziwamadoda Qwabe and middleman Monde Mbolombo all told the court that she was murdered at the request of her husband, for a fee. But the judge dismissed it as “improbable” testimony of “self-confessed liars”. She said: “It contained so many mistakes, lies and inconsistencies that one simply cannot know where the lies end and the truth begins.”
Outside court, prosecutors insisted the judge had not gone as far as declaring Dewani innocent.
Spokesman Nathi Ncube said: “To say we’ve got an innocent man is an unfair statement because he was implicated by three witnesses and... the court can only pronounce on those witnesses.”
Anni’s uncle Ashok spoke of the family’s fury, saying they had been denied the full story and would suffer “sleepless nights for the rest of our lives”. He told MailOnline: “We will always live without ever knowing the complete events.
“But she would not have married him if she had known about his secret sex life with male prostitutes. Neither would we have, as a family, condoned (such) a union.
“We will now go through this case with our lawyers to confirm whether we can file a lawsuit against Shrien Dewani in the UK.”
Tongo and Qwabe are both serving reduced jail sentences for murder in return for testifying against Dewani. It will be up to prosecutors if Mbolombo faces criminal proceedings after the judge removed his immunity for being a state witness.
Xolile Mngeni, the second hitman, died in jail during the trial.
Daily Mail