THE community of Bushbuckridge took the law into their own hands and petrol- bombed the house of a sangoma they are accusing of assaulting a trainee female sangoma to death.

The action by the community comes after the police allegedly opened an inquest docket instead of charging the sangoma with murder.

Residents from Ramalema village came together on Monday evening and decided to petrol-bomb the house of the sangoma.

The sangoma, who allegedly beat Caroline Mabundato death, was "not even arrested".

There was pandemonium at the man's home yesterday shortly before 1am when a group of people started throwing stones and petrol bombs at this house.

Police said the man managed to escape to the police station where he opened cases of arson and malicious damage to property.

Bushbuckridge police spokesperson Warrant Officer Donald Mabaso said yesterday: "The complainant managed to identify two suspects from the mob who had taken part in the attack.

"One of the two has been arrested and will appear in the local magistrate's court soon."

The community is also unhappy over Bushbuckridge station commissioner Colonel Hlomogi Mogane's decision to treat the matter as an inquest instead of murder despite the death of Mabunda, 27.

The sangoma's neighbour, who did not want to be identified, said: "He severely assaulted the woman, who was later hospitalised, with a sjambok.

"She died from her injuries in hospital, but the station commissioner refused to open a murder case against the principal sangoma. He instead opened an inquest case."

Sowetan has it on good authority that the postmortem, conducted at the Mapulaneng Hospital, confirmed that Mabunda died from internal bleeding.

Mogane confirmed that an inquest case had been opened.

"There is nothing wrong with an inquest because it can later be changed to murder depending on the outcome of the postmortem," Mogane said. "We have also not yet received the postmortem results."

This despite the fact that Mabunda died on June 25.