Jaishika Amtha was bound and gagged before she was shot twice in the head as she knelt against a bed in her Lenasia home.
From the evidence taken from the crime scene, it was known that the 23-year-old tried to fight off her attackers before they overpowered and killed her.
Yesterday Alexis Maré, 32, and Sharon du Preez, 45, were found guilty of Amtha’s murder, two-and-a-half years after they used online market site OLX to trick the pharmacy student into opening the door for them.
On March 17, 2016, Amtha’s mother found her daughter’s body after returning home from the temple. Yesterday she watched as the two were jailed for an effective 30 years in the Palm Ridge High Court in Gauteng.
Maré and Du Preez both received 20 years for murder, 10 for robbery with aggravated circumstances, five years for illegal possession of a firearm and three years for illegal possession of ammunition. Some of the sentences will run concurrently.
Amtha’s uncle, Dharmesh Kanti, was in court yesterday to witness the sentencing.
“We as the family are quite happy, but nothing will bring her back even if they were sentenced to 50 or even a 100 years,” he said after the trial.
Amtha had been studying for her Master's degree and her plan was to go into pharmaceutical research.
“She was the lifeline in our family,” says Kanti.
A month after the murder, police had no leads. But this changed when a team of KwaZulu-Natal detectives, comprising Warrant Officer Rajan Govender, Rajen Nagessar and Pravad Maharaj, received a tip-off of a crime that had happened in Gauteng.
The tip-off involved a stolen cellphone that the detectives were able to trace back to Maré.
She quickly confessed, after police found her in possession of stolen property belonging to Amtha. Maré’s partner, Du Preez, was also arrested.
Police discovered that Maré was an ex-SAPS policewoman and they confiscated her uniform when they searched the smallholding that she and Du Preez shared.
Du Preez, according to someone close to the case, was financially dependent on Maré. Maré was the one known for her strength.
But in court Maré and Du Preez changed their story. They claimed that Amtha had approached them on OLX and had told them that she was suffering from cancer and had asked them to assist her to commit suicide.
Their story fell apart when a post- mortem found that Amtha was healthy at the time of her death.
The court heard that Amtha had attempted to sell a number of items, including the recovered cellphone and TV on OLX.
The gun used to shoot Amtha was never found. In her confession Maré claimed that she had dumped it in a patch of veld.
What is not known is how the duo gained entry to Amtha’s home. Those who know the case suspect that Maré may have used her former occupation as a police officer to gain Amtha’s confidence. And there is something else that bothers Kanti.
“I have this feeling in my gut that they have done this before. The problem is that we might never know.”