ON Thursday the family of slain Kimeera Rajbunsi will be at Westville Prison, where her killer is serving his sentence, making a victim impact statement.
Kimeera, 17, was killed by her boyfriend, Sholin Bissoon, in March 2014.
Bissoon has applied for parole. In 2015 Bissoon was sentenced to 12 years for kidnapping and murder.
He hit Kimeera with a frying pan before stabbing her multiple times and tossing her body in a stream in Glen Anil, north of Durban.
In a Facebook post on Monday, December 20, her sister, Ashmika Rajbunsi, said parole should not be an option for murderers.
He has now applied for parole in the sixth year of his sentence.”
Ashmika also shared a link to a petition, asking for people to show their support against Bissoon’s parole bid by signing it.
By midday on Wednesday the petition had more than 1 600 signatures.
Speaking to the Daily News Ashmika said the Department of Correctional Services would take their relevant statements on how Kimeera’s murder had impacted on them.
“As a family we request to have a full victim-offender dialogue. This is basically a communication period between us and the offender asking him unanswered questions.”
She said the offender would not be there on Thursday.
“All of these processes followed are in relation to the parole he applied for and we as a family are against it and will do whatever it takes to have this denied.
“We want to create awareness about the weak justice system and how the justice system seems to be more in favour of the offender rather than the victim.”
Ashmika described the lengthy court case, from 2014 and 2015, as horrifying and traumatising.
She said that since it was their mother, Sunita, Ashmika and Kimeera at home after their dad passed in 2010, it was a huge change for them when Kimeera went missing and they “could feel her absence”.
“When you have one sibling, the bond that you share is obviously way stronger than when you have more than one … we used to always be together 100% of the time,” Ashmika said.
Their mother had to go for counselling because she did not take the incident well.
“They want to find out the psychological impact, the emotional impact and if he’s out on parole are there any restrictions that we would like to bring forward,” Ashmika said.
She said her mother had questions for Bissoon.
“We just found her as a missing person and we knew that three days after this he confessed to the murder, but how it happened, what transpired, whether they had an argument? We have no idea what actually happened that day.”
The family believed that since Bissoon pleaded guilty to his crimes, he should serve his full sentence.
“I feel that the justice system is weak in only allowing him to serve 50% of the sentence,” Ashmika said.
She said that 12 years was insufficient for kidnapping and murder.
Daily News/ IOl