Arthur Greene
Babita Deokaran was killed in an execution-style assassination outside her home in Johannesburg on Tuesday just minutes after dropping off her child at school.
The Special Investigating Unit (SIU) confirmed that the senior official in the Gauteng health department was a witness in the investigation into corrupt personal protection equipment (PPE) deals that rocked the province last year.
SIU spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago said Deokaran was one of more than 300 witnesses in the investigation into the R332 million scandal.
“Babita Deokaran has been involved in many investigations and she has been assisting long before the PPE cases. We protect our witnesses (which is why) nobody has known she was a witness,” Kganyago said.
Deokaran’s murder is likely to have been a hit, police told the Daily Maverick. But Kganyago said that it was too early to connect her testimony to her murder.
She was reportedly shot multiple times in the upper body as she waited for the gate of her residence to open. She succumbed to her injuries shortly after being rushed to hospital.
Messages sent by Deokaran show that she and other officials faced intimidation, demotions and false misconduct charges when they tried to blow the whistle on corruption in the health department.
Deokaran wrote to Shan Bolton, director of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation, describing the charges and intimidation she faced.
“They suspended the 2 SCM Directors and I. They made the life of the payments director a living hell; she resigned,” she wrote.
“Every few years, we have a different team of people who come in and loot, and the funds seem to be a bottomless pit,” she also wrote.
Image source: @TheTimes
