* This story was updated at 10.20am.
British television channel Sky News is broadcasting pictures of the February 14 crime scene inside the house of paralympian Oscar Pistorius.
The images, also shown on the Sky News website on Friday, include those of the bloody bathroom where Pistorius shot his lover, Reeva Steenkamp on February 14. The shots were allegedly fired through the toilet door.
This is the first time the public has seen the actual room where the athlete's model girlfriend was killed.
It was unclear how Sky News obtained the pictures.
National police spokesman Brigadier Phuti Setati said on Friday that the SA Police Service could not comment on the pictures, because it did not know how Sky News came possess it.
"We don't want to be distracted by these deliberate tactics. All that we want to do is secure conviction, so we are working throughout and investigating professionally."
In March, former lead investigator in the case Hilton Botha told The Star that police had been offered extraordinary amounts of money for pictures of the crime scene.
Botha, who resigned from the SAPS in March, said at the time that an officer at Boschkop police station had been offered $50 000 for a picture of the door.
Botha said the offer had been made by an international media house to “an officer Van der Merwe” who worked on the crime scene. He did not know the officer’s first name.
Botha said he and other officers who worked on the case were offered between R5 000 and R10 000 a picture by local media houses.
He declined to name which media were involved.
“If that happens (the leaking of photographs), both the State and the defence’s cases could be destroyed,” Botha said at the time.
“I decided at that point that all pictures should be sent off to forensics immediately. That way we had no pictures and there could be no leak.
“But with that kind of money, you just never know. Someone could get past or the officers go to eat something and you just don’t know what could happen,” he said, referring to the possibility of a photographer bypassing security and getting on to the scene.”
Pistorius is due to appear in court on June 4.
Lawyers for both the prosecution and the defence have said the first hearing in Pretoria will be a mere formality, lasting perhaps 10 minutes, with months of delays expected before the actual trial begins. - IOL, Sapa