Son charged with kitchen killing
. .
A week after a Clairwood grandmother was found dead in her kitchen, her eldest son was arrested and charged with her murder.
Udesh Bulai, 31, who works for a shipping company, of Houghton Road, appeared briefly in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Monday. He was charged for the murder of his mother, Premie, 54, a housewife. He was not asked to plead. He will apply for bail on October 17.
Bulai, who is being represented by attorney Logan Padayachee, is in police custody at the Westville Prison.
Padayachee said his client intended pleading not guilty.
“According to my client he supported his mother and she had been the beneficiary of his pension fund.”
State Prosecutor Shayna Naidoo plans to oppose bail.
A few days after the killing Brighton Beach detectives arrested Bulai at his home.
Post mortem results revealed the mother of three died as a result of a blunt force injury to the chest.
According to sources a screw driver was used in the brutal attack.
Her husband, Brij, who was not at home at the time of the incident, when interviewed by POST last week, said he had been alerted to his wife’s murder after he had seen a large crowd outside his rented home.
Bulai was quoted in this newspaper saying he had found his wife lying dead on the kitchen floor and no one had been around her body.
He said his son, Udesh, and his seven-year-old daughter had been at home at the time.
“Udesh told me he had been in the bathroom when two unknown men entered the house. He said he had been stabbed in the palm while trying to ward off his mother’s attackers.”
Brij described his wife as a “quiet and homely woman”.
On Tuesday, POST visited the home of the dead woman and were greeted by two vicious dogs on a running chain.
The couple’s second son, evidently distraught, declined to speak to the media citing reasons that he was not home at the time of the killing.
Family spokesman Jay Naidoo said the family were going through a lot of turmoil and had nothing to say to the media. - POST, page 3