Brother beheads sister for rituals, goes blind on eve of trial

A Magunje family was left shattered after their 20-year-old son murdered his own sister in cold blood, then lost his sight on the eve of his trial.

High Court judge Justice Philda Muzofa, sitting with assessors in Chinhoyi, convicted Isaac Mashonga, now 28, of brutally killing his sister, Dadirai Mashonga, in their kitchen hut in Mashonga Village, Zvipani, Magunje, in July 2017.

The horror began when their 93-year-old father, Champion Mashonga, and his wife woke up to find their daughter’s headless body sprawled in blood.

“No parent can imagine one of his or her children beheading his sibling in their kitchen,” Muzofa said while delivering her judgment, calling it “a tragedy that will haunt this family and community forever.”

On the night of July 13, 2017, Isaac, then 20, arrived at his parents’ home in the company of a local businessman known as “Giant”, real name Robert Tichareva.

The businessman was arrested together with Mashonga, but has since passed on.

Prosecutors told the court the two had conspired to kill Dadirai for ritual purposes, with Isaac allegedly promised US$4,000 for the beheading.

That night, Dadirai was fast asleep in the kitchen hut.

Villagers later testified that Isaac led Robert straight to her room.

Inside, she was strangled and then decapitated using a kitchen knife, axe and adze.

The pair stuffed the head into a green satchel and smuggled it out to a derelict building near the business centre.

The following morning, Isaac returned to the homestead wearing blood-soaked clothes.

Villagers who gathered at the gruesome scene apprehended him, tied his hands, and later forced him to lead them to the hidden satchel. Inside was Dadirai’s head.

“He confessed and showed us the weapons,” testified his father, Champion. “As a father, I had no reason to misrepresent the facts. I was simply a troubled father.”

As if the ordeal was not enough, Isaac lost his sight while awaiting trial.

Prison doctors confirmed he is now 80% blind, a development that deepened his elderly parents’ pain.

“For this elderly couple, they have lost two children at the same time – one through death and one through incarceration,” the judge noted.

Inside prison, Isaac’s blindness has left him dependent on fellow inmates for food, bathing and movement. “Being blind and in prison presents a double challenge,” the court acknowledged, though ruling that disability could not shield him from punishment.

Isaac had claimed he was drugged by Robert and acted under the businessman’s instructions. But Justice Muzofa dismissed his story as “far-fetched” and “chicanery.”

“The accused literally took the Court for granted,” the judge said. “He carried the satchel fully aware that it had his sister’s head. He then went to sleep. How can a person conduct himself likewise and yet claim he was intoxicated?”

The court found that Isaac acted as a willing accomplice. “The proved facts admit of no other inference except that the accused was part of this grand plan,” Justice Muzofa ruled.

The judge said the killing had “induced a sense of shock and revulsion” in the community and branded it “murder in aggravating circumstances.”

Although Isaac’s youth, six years in pre-trial custody and his disability were considered, the court said retribution and deterrence must prevail.

He now faces decades behind bars, blind, broken, and carrying the weight of a family curse: the brother who killed his sister and destroyed his parents’ twilight years.