Pretoria –

Courtroom D of the Pretoria North District Court was packed on Wednesday as family and friends waited for the bail application of four men accused of murdering Gauteng policeman Maj-Gen Tirhani Maswanganyi to start.

Nditsheni Daniel Nefolovhodwe, 39, Roger Godfrey Moseki, 33, Tshepo Mosai, 30, and Ndaedzo Isaac Vele, 29, face charges of premeditated murder, conspiracy to commit murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, and driving a vehicle without the owner’s permission.

Maswanganyi’s body was found on June 17 in a field near Hammanskraal, north of Pretoria, with his hands and feet bound.

A police patrol first found his Isuzu bakkie abandoned next to the R101. A police uniform and a police identification card were in the car.

His widow Shereen Maswanganyi sat in the front row of the public gallery wearing a black jacket.

Around 10 members of the police’s tactical response unit were inside the court, three of them heavily armed.

Maswanganyi was the police’s Johannesburg cluster commander. – Sapa