The verdict that determined whether controversial Dr Nandipha Magudumana would be granted bail and released from custody was denied by the Bloemfontein magistrate’s court on Monday, 11 September.

‘FLIGHT RISK’: DR NANDIPHA MAGUDUMANA DENIED BAIL
In court on Monday, Nandipha Magudumana was denied bail. She will continue to fight charges of fraud, corruption, violating a corpse, defeating the ends of justice, aiding and abetting an inmate to escape from lawful custody, concealing an escaped offender, and arson at her next court appearance on 11 October, Mail & Guardian reported.

In the ruling, Magistrate Estelle de Lange was quoted as saying that Magudumana was “a definite flight risk… I find that she did not satisfy the court that it is in the interest of justice for her to be released on bail. [And so], the application to be released on bail is refused.”

Magudumana has been held in custody for about five months since her arrest in Tanzania with her rapist and murderer boyfriend Thabo Bester. The couple was found in possession of several passports with different names. This of course comes after being on the run for two weeks. Bester became one of South Africa’s most talked about fugitives after having succeeded in staging his death in 2022 by starting a fire in his prison cell and dumping the lifeless body of Katlego Bereng in his place in the elaborate plan to escape from the maximum security prison, Mangaung Correctional Centre.

Dr Nandipha Magudumana
Dr Nandipha Magudumana. Image via Twitter @sli_masikane
WHERE IS THE CONTROVERSIAL DOCTOR KEPT?
Since Dr Nandipha Magudumana’s bail was rejected, she will return to the Bizzah Makhate Correctional Centre in Kroonstad where she was previously kept, EWN reported. Meanwhile, after the escaped fugitive was napped in April, he was transferred to the C-Max section of Pretoria’s Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Centre. He and Magudumana will reunite again in court in a month’s time.