In November 2010, newlyweds Anni and Shrien Dewani traveled to Cape Town, South Africa, for their honeymoon. What followed became one of the most closely watched criminal cases in South African and British history.
A Promising Beginning
Anni met Shrien Dewani, a British Indian businessman from Bristol, sometime before their engagement. Shrien had taken over his family’s care home management company, a business so successful that his family had once been personally congratulated by the Queen on his mother’s birthday. Well-educated and confident, he quickly became an important part of Anni’s life.
When Anni introduced Shrien to her family in Sweden, he made a strong first impression, greeting relatives with visible respect.
Her father held some reservations about the relationship, partly because he knew Shrien had previously been engaged to someone else, but he set those concerns aside after Shrien assured him that only Anni’s happiness mattered going forward.
Even so, her father noticed subtle tension during the visit. Shrien seemed almost eager to be questioned about his past, while Anni remained physically affectionate toward him even as he stayed reserved and unresponsive.
Her father attributed the awkwardness to nerves, reasoning that meeting a partner’s extended family for the first time could unsettle anyone.
In the months that followed, Shrien pursued Anni with visible enthusiasm. He sent flowers to her workplace, expressed his feelings directly, and took her on extravagant outings.
Eventually, Shrien’s father invited Anni’s family to Bristol, a gesture regarded as significant within their culture. The visit proceeded smoothly on the surface, though Anni and Shrien again appeared distant from one another for much of the trip.
Near the end of the visit, Shrien’s parents presented Anni’s parents with a silver dish filled with fruit, nuts, and a small statue of the Hindu deity Ganesh, a traditional gift passed from a groom’s family to a bride’s family, and offered their congratulations.
The gesture caught everyone off guard, since Anni and Shrien were not yet formally engaged. Anni herself was fond of Shrien but had not yet told him she loved him. When he later asked whether she would consider marrying him, she hesitated before telling him she would be open to it.
In the weeks that followed, her feelings shifted back and forth. At times she felt ready to commit to the relationship and planned to tell her parents so; at other times she admitted she barely knew him.
That uncertainty ended one morning in May 2010, when she called her father to share the news that she had decided to marry Shrien. Wedding preparations began soon afterward.
Wedding Preparations and Warning Signs
Shortly after Anni agreed to marry him, Shrien flew her to Paris on a private jet, where he gave her a designer dress and a pair of shoes to wear to dinner.
That evening, he proposed with an engagement ring reportedly worth thirty thousand dollars, presented to her on a plate in place of dessert. Anni later told a cousin that she finally felt she was in love.
As wedding planning progressed, however, concerns began to surface. Anni confided in her siblings and cousins that Shrien had grown controlling. He frequently asked where she was, what she was doing, and who she was with, and he expected her to record her monthly spending in a spreadsheet for his review.
On one occasion, after seeing her carrying a shopping bag bearing a brand name he disliked, he insulted her with a demeaning remark.
While shopping for her wedding dress, Shrien brought along Anni’s cousin, Sneha, rather than Anni herself. During the outing, he joked about transforming her appearance, comparing her to an unattractive bird turning into a swan. Around the same time, Anni asked her father directly whether she was good-looking.
Around the same period, Anni grew troubled that Shrien avoided any physical intimacy with her. He explained that he was undergoing hormone treatment for infertility, but Anni doubted the explanation and confided to Sneha that she suspected he was not being honest.
When her father learned of these concerns, he chose to hope that marriage and time spent together would resolve them.
The Wedding and the Honeymoon
The wedding, held in Mumbai, India, drew roughly 350 guests, and Anni wore an elaborate lehenga designed by Ritu Kumar. Despite the celebration, Shrien criticized her outfit at one point during the multi-day ceremony.
On one of those days, Anni told Sneha that she had decided the marriage would not work, but that she intended to continue through the remaining events and consider divorce afterward rather than call things off early. By the final day of the wedding, she remained unconvinced that the relationship would improve.
Following the ceremonies, the couple traveled to Cape Town for their honeymoon, which included a stop at Kruger National Park for a safari. Despite the tension surrounding their wedding, the two appeared to enjoy their time together during the early part of the trip.
On November 13, Anni’s mother called to check in on the couple. Shrien answered and explained that Anni had stepped out to exchange currency. About an hour later, Anni called her parents herself, describing South Africa’s mountains, wildlife, and cities.
Partway through the conversation, she shifted from speaking Gujarati and English, languages Shrien understood, into Swedish, a language he did not.
She told her parents she would share more once she returned the following Tuesday, sounding noticeably anxious. When they asked whether everything was alright, she insisted she would explain everything within the next two days before ending the call abruptly.
Tragedy in Cape Town
Just after midnight, Anni’s father received a call from Shrien’s father with alarming news: the couple had been kidnapped in Cape Town. Shrien had already been released, but Anni remained with the kidnappers.
Anni’s father asked whether the captors were demanding money, offering to pay whatever amount was needed, but Shrien’s father had no further details beyond a promise to keep him informed.
Anni’s mother, upon hearing the news, could not stop crying, repeating that she feared her daughter would never come home.
Anni’s father immediately arranged a flight to South Africa, planning to meet Shrien’s father during a layover in Amsterdam so the two could travel onward together. While in Amsterdam, he called home for an update and learned that Anni had been shot and that her body had been found.
Police had discovered her in the back seat of an abandoned car; she had been shot once in the neck, with the bullet also passing through her hand.
After landing in Cape Town, the two fathers were met by staff from the Swedish and British consulates, who accompanied them to the Cape Grace Hotel, where the couple had been staying. The next morning, Shrien described what had happened.
The couple had gone to dinner and were being driven back to the hotel by their hired taxi driver, Zola Tongo, when Tongo asked if they wanted to see the “real Cape Town.” He then turned off the main road into a high-crime area, where two armed men hijacked the vehicle.
The gunmen forced Tongo out of the car, robbed Shrien of his money, wallet, watch, and phone, and continued driving with Anni still inside before eventually pushing Shrien out as well. Shortly afterward, they shot Anni and abandoned the vehicle on a side street.
Police recovered the car and Anni’s body the following morning. Her watch, a diamond bracelet, her handbag, and her phone were all missing.
When her father asked to see her, Shrien told him that her body would need to be prepared first because she had lost too much blood, a remark that stayed with her father for years afterward. Investigators later confirmed that Anni had not been sexually assaulted.
The next day, relatives were permitted to view her body, though Shrien chose not to attend, saying it would be too difficult for him emotionally. Arrangements were then made to fly her body to England for cremation. Before the family departed, Anni’s father noticed that Shrien had gotten a haircut and purchased a new suit.
The two families traveled through Amsterdam, where Anni’s passport was stamped to record her death, before continuing on to Bristol for the funeral. Anni’s own parents received their invitation to the service through Facebook and were given little role in planning it; beforehand, Shrien’s family held a casual gathering with pizza.
During preparations for the cremation, Shrien took part in dressing Anni’s body, a task traditionally reserved for people of the same gender in Hindu custom, and placed bangles on her arms in a manner that distressed those nearby.
He also did not allow her cousin or sister to spend private time with her body. On the day of the cremation, as the family gathered to place handwritten letters inside her coffin, Shrien interrupted and asked them to leave the room; the letters were removed before the cremation proceeded.
Investigation, Trial, and Aftermath
In the days that followed, South African police arrested three men: the hijackers, Mziwamadoda Qwabe and Xolile Mngeni, and a hotel receptionist, Monde Mbolombo. All three initially described the incident as a robbery that had gone wrong, portraying Anni, Shrien, and their hired taxi driver, Zola Tongo, as fellow victims.
Tongo was soon implicated by mounting evidence, and in December 2010 he changed his account, pleading guilty to kidnapping, robbery, and murder in exchange for an eighteen-year prison sentence. As part of his plea, he identified Shrien as the person who had arranged the killing.
Shrien was arrested in Bristol shortly afterward and released on bail while he fought extradition to South Africa.
Around this time, Sneha shared text messages with the family showing that Anni had expressed deep unhappiness before her death, including statements about not wanting to continue with the marriage and feeling unable to be affectionate with her husband.
Investigators building the case against Shrien also cited phone records linking him to Tongo, along with hotel security footage. One clip showed Tongo warning Shrien about nearby cameras, after which Shrien looked up toward them.
Another showed him remaining outside the hotel with Tongo for several minutes after Anni had already gone inside with their luggage.
Additional footage showed Mbolombo receiving a call from Tongo shortly after the couple was dropped off, followed by a private meeting between the two men, and on the night of the murder, footage showed Shrien briefly leaving dinner to retrieve a phone he had left at the hotel, followed by another call with Tongo lasting more than five minutes.
Mbolombo was later granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony against the other men involved.
Around the same period, reports emerged claiming that Shrien was gay, an allegation he denied.
One report featured a male escort who said Shrien had paid him for several encounters, the most recent about a month before his engagement to Anni, and that Shrien had frequented a London club known for its gay clientele. Not long after, Shrien attempted suicide and was hospitalized while continuing to fight extradition.
Qwabe pleaded guilty in August 2012 and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Mngeni, whose trial had been repeatedly delayed by declining health following surgery for a brain tumor, was convicted that November and sentenced to life in prison.
In April 2014, after losing a three-year legal battle in the United Kingdom, Shrien was extradited to South Africa and charged with murder, robbery, kidnapping, and obstructing justice. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
During the trial, which began later that year, Shrien stated that he was bisexual rather than gay, describing past relationships and encounters with both men and women, including paid encounters.
Investigators had found that he browsed gay dating websites while on his honeymoon with Anni and exchanged dozens of intimate messages with another man in the days following her death.
The presiding judge eventually stopped prosecutors from discussing his sexuality further, ruling it irrelevant to the murder charge, despite their argument that another man had come forward claiming Shrien had sought his help finding a way out of the marriage shortly before the wedding.
During the proceedings, Mngeni died in a prison hospital from complications of his brain tumor. Tongo’s testimony faced heavy scrutiny, as phone records and video evidence contradicted several of his claims.
He alleged that he and Shrien had discussed the murder during a specific call, but footage instead showed Shrien seated beside Anni at that time with no sign of a sensitive conversation.
His claim that Shrien had threatened him on the night of the murder was similarly undermined by footage showing Shrien entering the restaurant first and never leaving without Anni.
On December 8, 2014, the judge acquitted Shrien of all charges, ruling that Tongo’s testimony contained too many inconsistencies to reliably connect Shrien to the crime, while noting that the witnesses involved had reason to shift blame onto him.
Tongo remained in prison until 2022, when he was granted parole after serving about twelve years of his sentence.
Some inconsistencies remained in Qwabe’s own account: he said he had been startled when Mngeni fired the fatal shot, and that both men fled the scene without confirming whether Anni was dead.
In November 2020, on the tenth anniversary of her death, Shrien was seen leaving a home in London that he shared with a partner.
Five years later, in November 2025, a two-part documentary revisiting the case aired to mark fifteen years since the murder, featuring new interviews and previously unseen material; Anni’s family has said they still lack a full account of what happened to her that night.
Remembering Anni Dewani
Long before she became known through the case that followed her marriage, Anni Hindocha was raised in the small Swedish town of Mariestad, in a close-knit family alongside her siblings, Ami and Anish.
Those who knew her as a child described her as playful and happy, with dark brown eyes and a strong personality that stayed with her into adulthood. She grew up with the comforts her family could provide and remained close to them throughout her life.
She trained as an engineer and worked for a telecommunications company before, as a young woman, moving to London to build a new chapter of her life alongside her cousin, Sneha, whom she had always considered one of her closest and most trusted friends.
Like many people finding their footing in a new city, she took on jobs and later moved on from them, earned money and spent it just as quickly, and built a wide circle of friends along the way.
By most accounts, the period before she met Shrien Dewani was one of the fuller and more hopeful chapters of her life, marked by new beginnings and the promise of what was still to come.
Months after her death, in keeping with Hindu tradition, her family scattered her ashes in her favorite spot along Lake Vänern, close to the Mariestad home where she had grown up. They have returned to that same shoreline every year since to remember her.
