They deliberately put the child in a bucket full of water with her head facing down until she died and then threw her lifeless body in the bushes.
A Lydenburg couple has been sentenced to 20 years for killing their 1-year-old daughter after the lovers were arrested for the murder in late 2019.
Both Fanni Poloane (31) and Sesi Maimela (32) were found guilty by the Mpumalanga High Court Thursday 17 March 2022 for the cruel murder of the girl child who was just 1-year and 6 months old.
The court heard how one night in September 2019 Poloane and Maimela took the child to the mountains of Lydenburg and put her inside a bucket full of water with her head facing down until she painfully died.
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Maimela is actually the biological mom of the child and Poloane was just a step-dad.
In court, the lovers testified against each other – with Maimela claiming that her boyfriend Poloane is the one who actually forced her to kill her child.
But the court was not convinced and argued that the child died in the hands of people who were supposed to protect her.
The court heard how soon after killing the child the couple threw her lifeless body in the bushes and went back to their residence.
Days passed and people kept asking them about the child and “they could not give a proper response”.
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The couple themselves kept asking people about the whereabouts of the child without opening a missing person case with cops.
“The matter was reported to the police and they were arrested. An intensified search was conducted by police but the child’s body was never found at the bushes,” NPA spokeswoman Monica Nyuswa said.
The High Court sentenced them to 20 years for premeditated murder and 5 years for defeating the ends of justice and ordered that the effective sentence be 20 years for both of them.
Judge Kgama Shai said the killing of children cannot be accepted in our society.
He said the family has no closure as the child’s body disappeared in the mountains and has never been found till today.
The couple are actually from Burgersfort in Limpopo but lived in the Mpumalanga area of Ga-Madiseng Riba Cross in Lydenburg.
(edited by ZK)
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