Police expected to find a buried body when they saw fingers pushing up from the earth in KwaZulu-Natal on the North Coast.

What they didn’t expect‚ however‚ was a small child buried with the body.

A woman and a five-year-old girl were discovered on top of each other in a shallow grave in Desainagar‚ Tongaat‚ after a local man found blood on the path home on Monday.

The man contacted the Community Emergency Response Team‚ who arrived and followed the blood trail.

CERT chairperson Nazir Sadack said that the resident was walking home around midday when he noticed the blood.

The resident called CERT because the blood had not been there a few hours earlier and he suspected something sinister had happened.

“We walked through the bush and followed the blood trail to a spot where we assumed a scuffle had taken place‚” Sadack said.

He explained that the grass was pressed down and there was a lot of blood.

“We followed the blood trail off the path and into the bush‚ where we found what looked like a grave.”

“We followed the blood trail off the path and into the bush‚ where we found what looked like a grave.”

Sadack said he then called police. SAPS walked through the area with a dog‚ which detected a body.

“We cleared the grave site and saw the tips of fingers sticking up from the soil. That’s when we knew we had a body.”

The body of a female adult‚ approximately 25 to 35 years old‚ was found in the grave. Her head had been bludgeoned and the blood was still fresh. According to Sadack‚ this was an indication that she had only been dead for a few hours.

“When we cleared her body [of soil] we saw a red piece of material. We thought it was a piece of her clothing.

“As we cleared the woman’s body from the grave‚ we saw that the material was a T-shirt on the body of a girl child‚ approximately 5 or 6 years old.”

Sadack said the child had wounds on her head and her face was severely disfigured.

“We are still looking into who they are. Nobody seems to know them [in the village].”

He said that they suspect the woman may be the girl’s mother‚ but that there was no way of knowing for sure until forensics had been done.

“The woman had no form of identification on her. She had no bag and no shoes on either.”

When asked if he believed the motive was robbery‚ Sadack said that he could not speculate‚ but that he believed something more sinister had taken place because of the extent of the injuries and because both bodies had severe disfigurement of their faces.

By: Alex Patrick -TimesLIVE

Source: TMG Digital.