The tragic story of Loga Pillay: A husband's fight for justice

IT’S BEEN eight years since a Durban man and his wife were brutally attacked at their home in Silverglen, Chatsworth, by an intern property practitioner from a well-known estate agency, together with three accomplices.

- MERVYN NAIDOO

Loga Pillay’s wife, Gona (66), the former school principal at Southlands Secondary, was strangled and stabbed multiple times, in succumbing to her injuries during the incident on September 20, 2017.

Pillay, 77, survived because he had the presence of mind to “play dead” while being stabbed repeatedly by Basil Lungani Underhill, who was working for Pam Golding Properties at the time.

“I miss my wife greatly; there is not a day that I don’t think about her. We were together for nearly 40 years until she was taken away from me in a gruesome way,” said Pillay.

Three of the four men involved in the attack – Underhill, his cousin Braveman Underhill, and Fredboy Msomi – were arrested, convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Durban High Court in July 2019.