Pretoria - The public will have to pay more than R3 million in damages for a couple wrongly kept in custody for more than 300 days by the police.
The police turned a deaf ear when the Director of Public Prosecutions in May 2007 decided not to prosecute the pair and ordered their release. They were only released more than three months later, on August 31, 2007.
Lisbeth Phasha, said to have been a good traditional healer, now lives as a recluse after she was falsely accused of orchestrating the murder of Jonas Leputo and receiving his body parts in a plastic bag.
The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, ruled the police had to pay her R2.1m in damages.
Her partner, Bernard Bila, a sangoma from Mozambique, will receive R1.48m following his ordeal after he was also falsely accused of being involved in the killing. The pair each spent more than 300 days in police cells in Polokwane before they were allowed home.
The court earlier ordered that the minister of police was liable for the damages the two had suffered.
Phasha and Bila’s arrest, together with four others, made headlines. The outrage was sparked when 21-year-old Jonas Leputu’s body was found in his shack in Seshego. He had been stabbed and some of his body parts removed, before his shack was set alight with him inside.
