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Nkulumane residents queue to view the bodies of the murder victims before the police carried them away yesterday

Patrick Chitumba / Nqobile Tshili Chronicle Reporters
A DOUBLE murder investigation has been launched after two dead bodies of a man and a woman were found in a drain in Bulawayo’s Nkulumane suburb.The woman was naked, save for a pair of panties, while the man was wearing a pair of jeans and a purple sweater.

The man’s throat was slit, his hands and legs were tied and he also had deep cuts on the neck while the woman’s hands were tied and the right side of her abdomen was ripped open.

Both bodies – which were still unidentified last night – had begun to decompose in a grass-filled drain at the corner of Intemba and Rangemore roads in Nkulumane 12.

Police are appealing for help in identifying the two.

Dozens of locals watched as CID detectives pulled the two bodies from the drain and placed them in metallic coffins.

Investigators took the extraordinary step of asking the gathered crowd to do an impromptu body viewing, hoping some would be able to identify the mystery couple.

“Because of the state of their decomposition, their faces can hardly be identified, so try identifying them using their clothes,” a police officer told the residents.

None of the locals could identify the couple, prompting some in the crowd to speculate that they were murdered elsewhere and their bodies dumped in Nkulumane.

Local resident Ian Tapela said: “We started living here in 1990, and we’ve never seen such cruelty. We’ve witnessed accidents, but not anything of this nature.

“We call on the council to deploy its workers to start cutting the grass because without this tall grass, we wouldn’t have had this tragedy.”

David Moyo, who lives nearby, added: “This is scary to see in our neighbourhood. These people may have just been dumped here because we haven’t heard anyone asking about any missing people.”

Moyo said the Bulawayo City Council should instal street lights and cut overgrown grass, which he said fuelled criminal activity.

Bulawayo police spokesperson Inspector Mandlenkosi Moyo said officers responded to anonymous callers reporting two dead bodies in the suburb.

“We’re appealing for those with information that may lead to the identification of the two. The woman is aged between 25 and 30 years and dark in complexion. The man is between 35 to 40 years, dark in complexion, of medium build and 1,7 metres in height,” said Insp Moyo.