Masoka Dube

Masoka Dube

The community of Madras, near Bushbuckridge in Mpumalanga, has been left horrified after the discovery of the body of an elderly woman who had been mutilated and burnt.

The body of the yet-to-be-identified woman had stab wounds to the head and burns on the buttocks and genitals.

A community member told Sowetan that he heard a car making a lot of noise in the early hours of the morning and thought gangs were spinning.

"When I woke up in the morning I saw something next to the road. I noticed when I approached that it was the body of a naked woman," he said.

He said no one seemed to know who the woman was because her face had been stabbed several times. Police were called to the scene.

Calcutta police spokesman Constable Sydney Tshuketana said police believed that the woman was killed elsewhere before her body was dumped in Madras.

"She might have been killed somewhere else before her body was dumped here," he said.

"We suspect that she might have been raped because her lower body had been burnt and she had been stabbed several times in the head and face, possibly with broken bottles."