The torment that never ends: Shrien Dewani was sensationally accused of arranging his bride's murder on their honeymoon. Four years on, her family watches as he flaunts his gay romance and wonders if they will EVER get justice

  • Shrien Dewani was cleared after being initially accused of murdering wife Anni
  • Dewani, 38, seen 'laughing' with lover Gledison Lopez Martins before Ibiza flight
  • Murdered Anni's father Vinod Hindocha 'speechless' at insensitive holiday snaps 
  • He added although son-in-law was 'declared not guilty... Shrien cheated us from day one. He wanted to have his homosexual life and use our daughter as a cover'

Boarding a holiday flight from London Gatwick to Ibiza a few days ago, a young female passenger recognised a familiar face in the queue.

The sight of this man, laughing flirtatiously with his muscular, handsome boyfriend, filled her with anger and a sense of injustice. Like her, Shrien Dewani was a member of the British-Hindu community. 

For that reason, from the moment he became embroiled in one of the most perplexing criminal cases of recent times — the honeymoon murder of his wife, Anni, in November, 2010 — she had followed the story with close interest. 

As she told me: ‘I just felt furious that he was off to enjoy himself on holiday with his boyfriend after what happened to his wife. It made me think how Anni and her family have suffered, while his life seems to be turning out so well.’

Scroll down for video 

Shrien Dewani was accused of arranging the murder of new bride Anni Dewani while they were on their honeymoon in South Africa in 2010. He was later cleared at trial

Shrien Dewani was accused of arranging the murder of new bride Anni Dewani while they were on their honeymoon in South Africa in 2010. He was later cleared at trial

In the court of public opinion, many would share her sentiments. To explain why, we should recap this grim saga. 

The scion of an admirably successful, Bristol-based family of Ugandan-Asian immigrants who made their fortune by operating a string of West Country care homes, Dewani, now 38, had a hugely advantageous upbringing.

After attending fee-paying Bristol Grammar School, where he was a prefect, and later gaining an accountancy degree, he began a career with a top finance house before helping set up the family business with his father, Prakash, a prominent Freemason, and brother Preyen.

What his family did not know was that by his 20s he had developed a predilection for gay sex with male prostitutes and men he picked up on the internet. 

However, he was briefly engaged to a tycoon’s daughter before wooing Anni, a beautiful Swedish engineer, whom he met via the East African Hindu community. 

Within a year of their first date, at a West End performance of The Lion King in 2009, Dewani had whisked Anni to Paris on a private jet to propose marriage (beguiling her with a £25,000 diamond engagement ring and gifts of designer clothes and shoes).

The following autumn they were married in a £250,000, three-day Hindu ceremony, attended by 300 guests, in a Mumbai hotel. Two weeks later, Dewani took Anni to South Africa, on honeymoon.

After a week on safari, they journeyed to Cape Town. There, after a late-night supper, their taxi driver drove them into a treacherous township, where the car was intercepted by two ruthless young gangsters.

For a never explained reason, their modus operandi did not follow the usual grisly pattern of South African car hijacks, in which the man is robbed and murdered and the woman raped, but freed. 

Dewani was bundled out of the car unharmed. Anni was unmolested but dispatched with a single bullet to the neck.

Quickly apprehended, the taxi driver and the two abductors claimed Dewani plotted the murder and paid them £1,300 to carry it out. He has always strenuously denied this. Yet as evidence of his secret gay liaisons emerged, their story gained credence with South African investigators.

As Dewani had been allowed to return to Britain with Anni’s body, there followed a three-year fight to have him extradited, most of which he spent in hospital, being treated for stress-related mental illness.

 Vinod Hindocha, Anni's father pictured above with her mother Nilam, said as soon as he saw the pictures of Dewani and his new partner he thought 'decent people, whether or not they are gay, don't behave like this.'

 Vinod Hindocha, Anni's father pictured above with her mother Nilam, said as soon as he saw the pictures of Dewani and his new partner he thought 'decent people, whether or not they are gay, don't behave like this.'

When, finally, he was forced to return to Cape Town, in October, 2014, his trial was a fiasco. Prosecution evidence was bungled, witnesses were discredited, and the crux of the prosecution case — that Dewani had Anni murdered to preserve the secret of his homosexuality — was wrecked when the judge ruled that his sexual orientation was ‘irrelevant’.

After being photographed for posterity with his prison cell warden, Dewani, looking decidedly more chipper than the twitching, stammering figure he presented at the trial, flew back to Britain, seemingly free to resume his lucrative business career and exotic social life.

Matters have not turned out that way, however. Though once pictured leaving a swish Mayfair restaurant, he became reclusive and, when seen travelling to the gym on the London Underground, looked to one passenger ‘exhausted and nervous’.

His psychological state can’t have been helped by the public reaction to his acquittal. Many took to the internet to voice misgivings, not least because the judge had abandoned the trial — saying the evidence was not strong enough — even before Dewani took the witness stand.

The British-Hindu holidaymaker on Dewani’s Ibiza-bound flight, on July 25, was among those who questioned his innocence from afar. And watching him embark on a break with his new partner, Brazilian-Spanish photographer Gledison Lopez Martins, her doubts resurfaced.

‘Dewani might look a lot older now — he is greying and haggard, and he walks with a strange limp — but he looked as though he hadn’t a care.

‘He was obviously having great fun with this man,’ the woman, who does not wish to be identified, told me this week. ‘His boyfriend was wearing flip-flops, shorts and a vest which showed off his muscles.

‘He must spend a lot of time in the gym and he seems to admire himself. He stood there taking selfies.’

The woman was so irate that, on the plane, she took a photo of Dewani — who for some reason sat separately from Martins — and passed it to the Mail’s website.

It then emerged that the couple have posted a series of intimate pictures and videos on social media, capturing the globe-trotting lifestyle he and his boyfriend enjoy.

A lifestyle Dewani can well afford, having been reinstated, following the trial, as a director of the family business — which has diversified into property and declared assets of £20 million in its 2016 accounts.

They also suggest that Dewani, whose self-absorbed behaviour in the aftermath of Anni’s murder increased police suspicions and incensed her grieving family (as her body lay in the mortuary, he bought a suit, had his hair cut and trawled gay websites), has changed little in these past four years.

For one photograph, showing him resting his head on Martins’s chest, was taken during a journey through India — the very last place he should choose for a romantic trip with his boyfriend, we might think, given that Mumbai was his wedding venue.

Shrien Dewani and his boyfriend Gledison Lopez Martins (right) have posted pictures on Instagram of their travels around the world including Ibiza and India

Shrien Dewani and his boyfriend Gledison Lopez Martins (right) have posted pictures on Instagram of their travels around the world including Ibiza and India

The pictures were hastily withdrawn, but not before Anni’s family had seen them. Her father, Vinod Hindocha, told me the sight of Dewani and his boyfriend had left him ‘speechless’ — and not only because he felt it grossly insensitive to have holidayed in the country where he married his daughter.

At the outset of his trial, he recalled, before the prosecution opened their case, Dewani had been permitted to make a statement, in which he openly admitted his attraction to men for the first time.

But — and it is a very big but — Dewani said he considered himself bisexual rather than homosexual,.

He told the court his relations with men were ‘mostly physical experiences or email chats’ with partners he met online, or prostitutes, whereas he had shared a ‘mutual chemistry’ with Anni, to whom he was ‘instantly physically attracted’.

This sensational opening gambit proved to be a masterstroke by Dewani’s high-powered defence team, for after hearing his uncontested testimony the judge ruled his sexual orientation immaterial, barring all evidence relating to it.

Dewani’s claim to bisexuality cut no ice with the watching Hindocha family, however. For Anni had sent her cousin anguished messages about Dewani’s frigidity (‘crying is my new hobby’, she wrote) and told her how he slept on the sofa on their wedding night rather than consummate the marriage.

Then, after her death, it was revealed that he subscribed to at least two gay dating websites, one for fetishists, and visited a sadomasochistic prostitute called The German Master, paying £400 to be humiliated and tortured. (This unfortunate man, Leopold Leisser, committed suicide in 2016.)

All this confirmed the Hindochas’ belief that Dewani has always been fully homosexual — a view finally confirmed, they say, by his serious relationship with Martins, which began some 18 months ago and has progressed so well that they now share a West London flat.

Yet had it been known four years ago, Anni’s father told me, it might have altered the course of the trial. Furthermore, if Dewani had summoned the courage to come out before the wedding, rather than deceiving his daughter into marriage, he says, she would never have gone to South Africa and would thus still be alive.

‘As soon as I saw those pictures at the weekend, my thought was: “Decent people, whether or not they are gay, don’t behave like this,” ’ said Mr Hindocha, who lives with Anni’s mother, Nilam, in the small Swedish town of Mariestad.

‘I want to stress I have absolutely nothing against the gay community, but Shrien cheated us from day one. He wanted to have his homosexual life and use my daughter as a cover.

‘Of course, he has been declared not guilty, so we have to accept that. But I don’t accept it, still. He should have explained everything under oath. That’s the least we deserved.’ His voice dripping with irony, he added: ‘If he is really bisexual, he must have had so many girlfriends. So where are they all? When I saw the photos, I wrote a message to Shrien’s parents Prakash and Shila on my Facebook: “Congratulations, you have a new son-in-law!” ’

Pictured: Anni Dewani's father Vinod Hindocha at the Western Cape High Court on November 24, 2014. Mr Hindocha has now said 'he has been declared not guilty, so we have to accept that. But i don't accept that still.'

Pictured: Anni Dewani's father Vinod Hindocha at the Western Cape High Court on November 24, 2014. Mr Hindocha has now said 'he has been declared not guilty, so we have to accept that. But i don't accept that still.'

Though the taxi driver and hijackers (one of whom has since died of a brain tumour) were jailed for murder, the Hindochas remain intent on bringing fresh legal action that will compel Dewani to address the ‘many unanswered questions’ about the murder.

The Dewani family, for their part, declined to comment on Shrien’s relationship this week. Perhaps surprisingly, however, given their religious background, his parents have evidently welcomed his boyfriend into the family.

Martins spent last Christmas with them, they attended a fancy-dress party he threw, were pictured with him in a big clan gathering in a restaurant, and are reportedly among his Facebook friends.

How he and Shrien were introduced is not known, though given their mutual penchant for partying and raunchy London gay clubs, such as Hoist, we can hazard a guess. So what do we know of Gledison Lopez Martins?

According to the loquacious potted biography he wrote for his portrait photography business, GLM Photos, he settled in London four years ago and works all over the world (this week, someone who answered his phone said he was in the Bahamas). 

He claims to have photographed many ‘personalities’, but the only famous face I could pick out from his portfolio was that of pop star Duncan James, 40, formerly of the boy band Blue. His website also features an erotic transgender section, where his subjects pose provocatively in body-stockings, suspenders and thigh-boots.

The testimonies of Martins’ clients praise him, personally and professionally. However, former neighbours at his various London flats present a different snapshot of his personality.

In Eastbourne Mews, Paddington, where he and Dewani recently shared a flat beside his photographic studio, complaints about Martins’s alleged anti-social behaviour are said to have been reported to the police (who decline to confirm or deny this). He also upset residents at a previous address, who say he staged wild parties.

Steve Penalver, a friend and former flatmate of Martins, said the strapping six-footer always had many admirers because of his looks and charisma.

Mr Penalver described Martins — who emigrated from Brazil to Spain with his parents when he was very young and was raised in Barcelona — as a kindly man who lent him money when he was hard up. He was usually gentle, he added, but was ‘quite tough’, and could ‘handle himself’ if anyone became aggressive when they were socialising.

Mr Penalver confirmed that neighbours who rented an office next to their flat frequently complained about Martins playing loud music.

This week, Martins was unavailable to respond to these claims. For the past six months, however, he and Dewani have lived, apparently peacefully, in a stylish apartment in an affluent area of West London.

The anything-goes island of Ibiza is clearly one of their favourite haunts, for the pair holidayed there last October before returning late last month, booking into a five-star hotel.

Their stay was cut short after four days, when Martins fell ill with an appendicitis — an event he announced in typical fashion, by posting social media photographs of himself languishing in hospital. Whatever else they might have in common, Dewani and his Brazilian lover share a narcissistic streak.

In the court of public opinion, some will wish them well in their relationship. They will say Dewani, having been found not guilty by a court, ought to be left to rebuild his life as he pleases. Others will take a different view.

Whatever one’s opinion, however, it is undeniably tragic that Shrien Dewani didn’t meet the man of his dreams, and settle down openly with him, before embarking on the romantic charade that ended when his honeymoon bride was shot in that God-forsaken township.

The comments below have been moderated in advance.

The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this article.