Court hears evidence in #NdudulaMurderTrial

A police sergeant was left without his state gun for more than a year when his service firearm was confiscated by police investigating the shooting of murder accused widow Bulelwa Ndudula's politician husband Sakhekile who died in a hail of bullets in September 2016.

This after such firearm, belonging to East London Port of Entry unit sergeant, Zola Mgodeni, was taken for ballistic tests after it was suspected of being used in the killing of Ndudula's husband.

Mgodeni, the defence's third witness, on Tuesday told the court that his state firearm was confiscated on March 30 2017 and only returned to him on April 6 2018 after investigators told him that ballistic tests have discovered that his gun was "invalid".

Mgodeni also told the court that police had accused him, in front of his wife, of having a romantic relationship with the murder accused.

He told high court Judge Igna Stretch that police in March 2017 visited his home in three vehicles and that they wanted to know how he knew the school teacher widow.

"I told them that I knew her from her school after they had asked me to assist them in their music classes because they had seen me assisting a school nearby their’s."

When police arrived at my home, I had just returned from work and my wife was inside while the kids were playing outside.

They later took my firearm but I was never informed of the outcome of such tests except being told that my gun was found to be invalid," he said.

State prosecuting advocate Sakhumzi Mtsila put it to him that investigators were merely doing their job by following up on information they had received.

He said there was nothing wrong with them finding out that such information was leading their investigation to nowhere.

This is when Judge Stretch intejected and told the defence team that she does not see the significance of such a witness in the trial.Defence advocate Mike Maseti later asked court to adjourn, less than an hour after proceedings commenced, saying he needed to go with the state team to inspect an evidence register at the Cambridge police station to ascertain whether the shirt buttons allegedly found on the shooting scene, were indeed captured in the register.

"I hope this is not a waste of court's time," Maseti was told by Judge Stretch before she adjourned proceedings for the afternoon.

This is a developing story.