The cops also steal cellphones from alleged suspects and leave them bleeding from severe assaults.
Mpumalanga police boss Lieutenant-General Mondli Zuma has said that action will be taken after their members were accused of badly assaulting and shooting an alleged suspect.
The cops did this thing on 18 July 2020, while the country was celebrating Mandela Day and Zuma said an investigation is underway – and said if it’s found the men who injured the suspect seen in a photo on social media are indeed their members “they will be dealt with harshly according to the prescripts of the law”.
The top cop saw the photo of the suspect – accused of stealing a police gun – and how he got badly injured in the KwaMhlanga area.
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Zuma’s office said the photo circulating on social media of a man seen lying in the bushes -“shot and injured” – happened on Mandela Day and as cops they have now been able to get his name.
He lives in KwaMhlanga and was raided by an unknown number of men while asleep at his house, accused of stealing a police firearm.
“These men then shoved the victim into the boot of their car,” Zuma’s spokesman Brigadier Leonard Hlathi said.
“And they drove with him to nearby bushes where they further assaulted and shot him, tied him with cable ties and left him like that,” Hlathi said.
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“The victim managed to crawl his way out of the bush until he was found by a passerby who then notified the police,” said Hlathi.
Hlathi said it also emerged that the same men earlier kidnapped, assaulted and then robbed cellphones belonging to two women they had confronted before attacking the male victim.
The Independent Police Investigative Directorate or IPID – the body responsible for investigating police brutality – has taken the matter over.
Zuma said: “I want to assure the public that this matter will definitely receive the necessary attention and should it happen that indeed our members were involved, they will face the full might of the law”.
He added that police are expected to “uphold the law” and “not threaten community members or put their lives in precarious positions”.
“What happened to these victims is shocking, let alone the alleged involvement of police members,” said Zuma.
(edited by MLM)
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