Levern Naidoo

The nightmare began as a consequence of the three teenage girls—Rashida, seventeen-year-old Denisha Levern Naidoo, and nineteen-year-old Krishnavelli Simone Pillay—witnessing a violent crime. The girls had been temporarily staying at a home in Chatsworth belonging to Jayce Lutchman Ramiah, who eventually asked them to leave. Shortly afterward, a group of local criminals robbed Ramiah, violently assaulting him and stealing his personal 9mm firearm. Because the three teenagers had witnessed this attack, the perpetrators targeted them to eliminate any potential testimonies. The suspects—Koogan Thevar, Nevellyn David, Nkosinathi Gumede, and an accomplice named Hamath Aboo Maurera—tricked the girls into a minibus taxi at the Workshop shopping centre in Durban under the pretense of taking them on a joyride. Instead, they drove the teenagers out to a secluded sugar cane plantation in the Folweni Reserve. Once deep inside the isolated property, the armed men forced the terrified girls out of the vehicle. Thevar used the exact handgun stolen from the previous robbery to execute the teenagers. Rashida Abdulla Khan was shot twice in the head at point-blank range, while her friends were also shot multiple times in the head and chest before the killers dragged their bodies further into the dense cane stalks to conceal them. The gruesome scene was discovered by local authorities the following morning, Thursday, October 17, 2002, after police received an anonymous phone call detailing the location of the bodies. Following an intensive investigation by the South African Police Service, led by Superintendent Vishnu Naidoo, the four perpetrators were swiftly apprehended and brought to trial. In March 2004, the legal proceedings culminated in the Durban High Court before Judge Vivienne Niles-Dunér, where Hamath Aboo Maurera turned state witness and provided harrowing details of the screams and terror of the girls during their final moments. The core perpetrators—Koogan Thevar, Nevellyn David, and Nkosinathi Gumede—were found guilty of execution-style murders, armed robbery, and illegal possession of firearms, resulting in multiple consecutive life sentences.