Police disrupt prayer meeting

News
POLICE yesterday stopped a peaceful prayer meeting in Bulawayo’s Nkulumane 12 suburb where two bodies were found dumped in a drainage channel last month. The meeting had been organised by Nkulumane 12 MP Thamsanqa Mhlanga.

POLICE yesterday stopped a peaceful prayer meeting in Bulawayo’s Nkulumane 12 suburb where two bodies were found dumped in a drainage channel last month. The meeting had been organised by Nkulumane 12 MP Thamsanqa Mhlanga.

LUYANDUHLOBO MAKWATI/ BENSON DUBE

Mhlanga said the police were unreasonable in barring residents from praying at the scene of the gruesome murders.

“These people were only here to pray for the suburb and the deceased who were found dumped in this ditch,” he said, pointing to where the bodies were found.

One of the residents Siphathisiwe Ncube said police told them the gathering was illegal before ordering that they should disperse.

“We were about to start the service and a police officer came and called one of the senior pastors and we were told to disperse,” she said.

The residents had to move to the nearby Methodist church where they conducted their prayers. Bulawayo police spokesperson Assistant inspector Abedinigo Ncube said they were not aware of the prayer meeting.

Lokukhanya Ncube (19) of Nkulumane 12 and her boyfriend Mthabisi Dube’s decomposing bodies were discovered by Bulawayo City Council workers.

Ncube was naked save for a pair of panties while Dube was wearing a pair of jeans and a purple sweater. Their throats were slit and the bodies were dumped at the drain at the corner of Intemba and Rangemore roads.

Ncube’s relatives said she had told them about a new boyfriend, a cross-border commuter transport driver, who spoiled her with money a few days before the brutal deaths.

Police say they are yet to make any breakthrough in their investigations into the double murder.