Tears of disbelief flowed over the weekend after the body of missing Mohammed Rif’at Booranoodien was dug out of a shallow grave in Seawinds.
More than two months after his disappearance, the dedicated team at Grassy Park Police Station made a breakthrough, making FOUR new arrests.
And on Thursday night, one of the suspects took cops to a veldjie where his killers buried his body after shooting him multiple times in an alleged hijacking.
The 29-year-old electrician from Schaapkraal was last seen driving his black Audi A3 in Grassy Park on 21 February.
Grassy Park Police Station commander Colonel Dawood Laing says officers had little information to go on.
Initially, they had linked his friend, Fazrie Benjamin, to his disappearance.
“At that stage we had established that Fazrie and his girlfriend, Mishka Francis, had robbed Rif’at,” explains Laing.
“Fazrie tried to sell Rif’at’s sim card to his parents for R200 and later tried to extort R1000 from the distraught couple, telling them their son was being held hostage by 28s gang members in Elsies River.”
A month later, Fazrie handed himself over to cops after his picture was published in the Daily Voice and, along with his girlfriend, was charged with kidnapping and robbery.
The couple refused to give information and were sent to Pollsmoor Prison.
Cops then discovered that Fazrie’s young brother was also involved in the robbery and in April he was nabbed just a few metres from the police station when a detective spotted him among a group of homeless people.
Laing says during questioning, the 23-year-old refused to give police any information and he joined his brother in the mang.
“It appeared to be another dead end, but Detective Kleinhayns along with Captain Ashley Petersen and Sergeant Adrian Baron, refused to give up and continued following up,” he says.
“Last week they spotted a 29-year-old suspect whose name had continuously come up in the investigation, but he bolted when he saw them.
“They realised he knew something and sent another team to pick him up when he thought they’d left the area.”
On Wednesday, the 29-year-old man piemped members of the Flakka Boys gang for the murder and took cops to the veldjie.
“He confessed that they had shot Rif’at multiple times and buried him in a shallow grave,” adds Laing.
“A special forensics team was brought in and they found a badly decomposed body of a man.
“We discovered that it was the same Nike takkies that Rif’at was wearing on the day he disappeared.”
Laing says the first suspect went to court on Friday and three more men, aged between 21 and 42, were charged with murder and will appear in the Wynberg Magistrates’ Court today.
Fazrie, his brother and girlfriend will now also be charged with murder: “At this stage of the investigation, we are looking into the link between Fazrie and the Flakkas. ”
Rif’at’s dad Anwar, 57, says their last hopes were dashed: “The police told us on Friday they needed to see us early and we just knew it was bad news.
“I understand that it had been a long time, but we still had hope that he was alive.”
“To kill him over a car is senseless. They could have just taken the car and if they wanted money, we would have given it to them for his safe return.
“I went to the mortuary and they told me DNA tests will have to be done, but I saw the clothes and the pictures,.I know it is my son.”