Durban - Convicted murderer Rajiv Narandas was on Wednesday granted R100 000 bail in the Johannesburg High Court pending the outcome of his Constitutional Court appeal.
Narandas must report daily to the Westville police station, wear an electronic monitoring device, not leave KwaZulu-Natal except for business and court appearances, and must surrender his passport.
Should his application to the Constitutional Court be dismissed, he must hand himself over to the Department of Correctional Services in Westville within 24 hours of the judgment.
Narandas was sentenced in 2014 to 18 years in prison by the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court in Johannesburg for stabbing 32-year-old former Durbanite Veenand Singh to death outside a Sandton nightclub in 2008.
When he was sentenced, magistrate Renier Boshoff had found that Narandas, with his group, was the aggressor who was looking for a fight.
Narandas first appealed against his conviction and sentence to the High Court in Johannesburg, sitting as the appeal court.
His conviction was confirmed, but his sentence was reduced from 18 years to 15. Narandas then took the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and lost.
He has now applied to the Constitutional Court for leave to appeal against the SCA’s decision.
Narandas was arrested in Durban soon after the Supreme Court appeal by Brighton Beach Warrant Officer Marius van der Looy on an intimidation charge.
He was kept in custody because the state believed he was a flight risk and had resisted arrest. This led to him failing to appear in the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court for the murder charge and the court issued a warrant for his arrest.
He had to appear in Gauteng after his appeal to the SCA had been dismissed. He was then handed over to the Gauteng correctional services.
He was brought back to Durban to appear on the intimidation charge, which was withdrawn last month.
The charge was related to an alleged “family dispute”.
Daily News
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