Furious relatives of a four-year-old girl who was raped and butchered after disappearing with a stranger are demanding to know why he was out on bail while accused of raping another child.
Tragic Bokgabo Poo was lured to a hidden spot while playing in a park in Wattville, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng, South Africa on 10th October.
Severed parts of the girl’s body were found in a woman’s yard and in a field later that week.
Police arrested suspect Ntokozo Khulekani Zikhali after CCTV footage showed the 28-year-old walking off with Bokgabo shortly before she went missing.
Zikhali appeared before Benoni Magistrate’s Court on 24th October on charges of kidnapping, rape, murder, defeating the ends of justice, and violation of a corpse.
But Bokgabo’s relatives are furious after discovering that their daughter’s accused killer was already out on bail charged with the rape of a nine-year-old girl.
Relative Lebogang Poo vented to local media: “Firstly, the guy has a pending case of rape. How was he let out?
“It is raising questions such as, should he not have been released, our Bokgabo would still be alive.”
During the latest hearing, devastated dad Irvin Ndlovu demanded that the alleged killer reveal where his daughter’s missing body parts were.
As the accused left the courtroom, Irvin reportedly yelled: “Tell me where my daughter’s body parts are! I want to bury my child.”
He told media outside the court: “If the law had done its job properly, he would have been left behind bars and my daughter would still be alive.”
Earlier reports had told how Zikhali was “always around children” with “money and sweets in his school bag”, according to an unnamed local woman.
She also revealed – bizarrely – that he “calls himself Harry Potter”.
Distraught mum Tsholofelo Poo also spoke of Zikhali’s savagery, telling how her daughter’s eyes were missing when she was found dead.
She told local media: “I saw her with the T-shirt she was wearing, her nose, her mouth, her little pretty fingers, her eye sockets, even though the eyes were not there, the hair, I could just tell that is my daughter.”
The case is ongoing and police are still searching for Bokgabo’s missing remains.
