The British tourist whose wife was murdered by armed hijackers on their honeymoon said last night: “They told me they wouldn’t hurt her”.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Shrien Dewani told the Mail how he pleaded with their kidnappers not to separate him from his wife, Anni, 28.
But he said they put a gun in his ear and pushed him out of the moving taxi. As he sprawled by the roadside in Gugulethu, they drove her into the night.
Just hours later her body was found inside the abandoned taxi. She had been shot at least three times, and a post-mortem examination could confirm fears she was also sexually assaulted.
Yesterday, 30-year-old Mr Dewani told how he felt powerless at being unable to save his wife, whom he had married just weeks earlier. “Of course I have an enormous amount of guilt about the whole episode,” he said. “However, having gone through events over and over again in my mind, it is difficult to see how we could have done things differently.”
The couple had arrived in the country last week and spent an “idyllic” four days on safari in the Kruger National Park.
On Friday they moved to Cape Town and after spending Saturday lounging by their hotel pool, decided to head out.
At Cape Town’s five-star Cape Grace Hotel where the couple had been staying, Mr Dewani said: “We spent an a hour-and-a-half driving around the city. At around 9pm, we headed to Somerset West.
“It was a beautiful evening and we walked along the beach and ate a place right on the seafront. We had been planning on just coming back to the city centre and having a drink in the Waterfront area.”
But then they decided to leave the safer tourist areas and have a look at a township in the city.
“Anni grew up in Sweden, and she felt as if the area around this hotel was just like at home: so clean and safe, and maybe a bit sterile. She had never been to Africa before, so she suggested that we should have a look at the “real Africa”.
“The stop was on the way back here and was intended so that we could experience a township. We were barely in the Gugulethu township when the attack happened.
“We had just turned off the junction and were stopped at a set of traffic lights. It was two African male gunmen. Both armed.
“They were banging their guns on the windows. One of them was using his gun to smash the driver’s window. Until this happened we had been completely oblivious. We were sitting in the back of the cab going through all the pictures of our safari.
“The first we knew that the cab was being attacked was when we heard the banging. I don’t want to go into detail about what happened to during the attack, because I will probably start crying. But they were so cold. They put a gun in my ear and pulled back the trigger - it really was the stuff of movies.”
Mr Dewani, from Westbury-on-Trym, near Bristol, who owns a series of care homes, told how the attackers forced the taxi driver out of the cab and took off at speed with the couple in the back.
He said that he and his wife, who had married in India, were together for 20 minutes as it hurtled around the township’s dark streets and the two men took their valuables.
“The men kept on saying, “We are not going to hurt you. We just want the car.” That was a lie. Most of the conversation in the car was us pleading for us to be dumped together. I held on to Anni as I said to them, “Look, if you’re not going to hurt her why don’t you let us go?”.”
Soon the gunmen threw him out of the hijacked taxi’s window.
“Just before they dumped me, they insisted to me that they were going to dump her a few minutes later in a different place. They just said they didn’t want to dump us together. I resisted, but they eventually forced me out the back of the passenger window. I landed on a patch of sand, landing first on my shoulder and then forehead. It was in the middle of the township.
“It must have been around 10pm or 10.15pm. I knocked on the doors of some shacks, but no one opened up. Then I noticed a man who was putting away his car and he agreed to call the police. The police took 25 minutes to arrive, during which time I just stood there, in the dark.
“When they did arrive, the police drove around slowly. It was extremely frustrating.”
By about 1am on Sunday, the police response had “ratcheted up several gears”, he added. “It was around 10.30am on Sunday when they found Anni’s body dumped in the back of the taxi in another township, miles from where we were picked up.”
Mrs Dewani had recently graduated from a product design course at university in Sweden. She was to move to London after their honeymoon, a prospect which Mr Dewani said “absolutely thrilled her”.
Recalling his wife, he said: “She loved people and she loved life and she was always, always happy.”
At home in Sweden, her father Vinod Hindocia described his daughter as “the most beautiful woman you can imagine”.
Family members have travelled to Cape Town to support Mr Dewani, who said he was initially suspicious the taxi driver may have tipped off the robbers. “We couldn’t understand how they knew about us. Initially I had a lot of suspicion about the driver. But he spent all of Sunday helping the police and was able to answer all the police’s questions. By the end, I quite liked him.”
“I don’t know if you believe in fate, but prior to last Saturday we had spoken to literally no one while we were on honeymoon. However, on the afternoon of the attack, Anni suggested that we should talk to our families. We phoned them all: our parents, grandparents and aunts and told them what a wonderful time we were having.”
The South African Police Service insisted it would leave “no stone unturned” in its search for the attackers. Mr Dewani said police had two suspects in mind. But by last night, no one had been arrested. - Daily Mail