POLOKWANE – He appeared before Judge President Ephraim Makgoba last Monday for the murder of his mother, Mehajeen, in Nirvana.
“The bail application based on new facts will be entertained on 16 and 17 April,” Makgoba said.
Patel was linked to the alleged murder of his mother soon after he is said to have killed his wife, Fatima, in their marital home in Polokwane in 2015.
Read more: ‘I didn’t kill my wife’ – Rameez Patel
An outcome of his petition to the judge president for that murder charge to be dropped is pending.
Patel appeared before court on 24 February and again on Monday, 2 March, for his new legal team to acquaint themselves with the case.
Makgoba postponed the matter to Monday so that Patel’s new legal representation could acquaint themselves with the matter.
Patel petitioned the Limpopo Judge President after the dismissal of his application to appeal the Limpopo High Court’s dismissal of his bid to be discharged.
In mid-2019 the then defence lawyer, Johann Engelbrecht SC, told Judge Joseph Raulinga that a petition would be sent to Makgoba after Raulinga denied the defence team leave to appeal his January ruling in which he dismissed Patel’s application for a discharge and found that there was a prima facie case against Patel.
Read more: Judge dismisses Patel’s application for discharge; says it was brought to delay proceedings
Rameez is also facing trial for his wife Fatima’s murder in 2015.
During trial proceedings of his wife’s murder his brother Razeen testified that he was at Patel’s home on the night his wife, Fatima, died and he, Razeen, later told their mother, Mahejeen, about the circumstances leading to Fatima’s death. Patel’s mother was killed soon after he was linked to the brutal murder of his wife.
Raulinga last year expressed unhappiness about developments in the case and suggested that the written version of a February 2019 ruling related to the discharge application, had been tampered with. He also remarked about a registrar who just disappeared from court when she was supposed to administer an oath.
“I don’t know whether some officials have been captured,” Raulinga said.
He also asked the defence lawyers to depose to an affidavit indicating how a transcribed court record which the prosecution did not have ended up in their possession. It emerged that a CD containing court recordings was removed from the court building and given to a company that specialises in court record transcriptions without the permission of the court registrar.
