Zaheera Boomgaard was convicted in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria of killing two elderly victims. She forged one of their wills to make herself the beneficiary.
Image: Zelda Venter
A woman who killed two elderly people as well as committed a host of other crimes including forging a will and 36 counts of theft regarding cash withdrawals from the account of one of her victims, faces a lengthy jail sentence.
Two bodies were found within months of each going missing, both burnt beyond recognition. Both were also strangled and hit with an object before they were set alight. The Gauteng woman, killer Zaheera Boomgaard, was acquitted on a third count of murder against her, but this body was never found.
The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria said there was not enough evidence to link her to the third alleged killing. John Naisby went missing in 2012 after visiting Boomgaard and was never seen again.
Boomgaard, 63, was convicted for the murder of Jamnadas Harkant Nathvani, a British national whose body was burnt beyond recognition, as well as for the murder of her friend, Lyntette Mustapha, 72.
Nathvani, also 72, had arrived in Gauteng in 2020, and he was last seen in February that year when he took a bus from Park Station in Johannesburg to Newcastle in KwaZulu-Natal. A missing person’s case was opened at the Newcastle police station, and the information was circulated.
His body was found in the open veld in Gauteng in March 2020 and was burnt beyond recognition. It was months later that the police were able to identify him by his teeth, but it was established that there were signs of blunt force trauma and strangulation.
Mustapha’s charred remains were found in Walkerville a few months later. She was identified by her fingerprints.
Judge John Holland-Muter found beyond reasonable doubt that circumstantial evidence all pointed to her as the perpetrator. She was found in possession of Nathvani's cellphone and the police found pictures on the phone of his passport and bank card, taken after his death.
Further damning evidence against her included tyre marks near where the body was found, which matched that of Boomgaard’s vehicle. There were also dragging marks, which the court concluded occurred when the body was taken out of the vehicle and dumped next to the road.
Mustapha was killed a few months after Nathvani and her body was found about 4 km from where his body was dumped. SANRAL gantries recorded Boomgaard’s vehicle was travelling in the vicinity of where Mustapha’s body was found. Blood on her shoes also matched that of Mustapha.
The court also heard evidence from the police that when Boomgaard was arrested, they found copies of two wills in her house which belonged to Mustapha and her sister Marlene, who had also died.
According to evidence, the wills were forgeries, and in the wills, Boomgaard was made the sole beneficiary. She handed the “original” copies of the wills to FNB. Boomgaard, meanwhile, testified that she had no knowledge that the wills were forgeries.
The court was told that a piece of paper, with Mustapha’s signature written several times, was also found in Boomgaard’s home. She was, however, only convicted of forging one of the wills.
Apart from the two murders and 46 counts of theft of making withdrawals from Nathvani’s bank account, Boomgaard was also convicted of the robbery of Mustapha’s cellphone and bank card.
Sentencing procedures will start on June 30.