Two former police constables have been sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for the murder of a 20-year-old man in Alice in the Eastern Cape.
The 37-year-old, Ntsikayesizwe Dlephu and 40-year-old Masixole Bushula were sentenced at the Middledrift Regional Court on Thursday.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson, Anelisa Ngcakani, said they were stationed at the Alice Police Station as detectives and were investigating a case of housebreaking before the incident occurred in August 2013.
She said in the initial stages of their investigation they arrested and questioned a Simphiwe Sityi, before torturing him and suffocating him with plastic bags.
Ngcakani said in the process Sityi implicated the deceased, Bathandwa Kula who they went to fetch from his home and took him to the police station where they tortured him in the same manner.
Kula passed out and was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Ngcakani said on the same day, an investigator for the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID), attended to the body and the crime scene.
She said he questioned Sityi who showed him the office where he and Kula were tortured.
Ngackani said both Dlephu and Bushula denied the allegations and claimed that Kula appeared to have epileptic fits.
Their version was however discredited in court.
The men were sentenced to an additional three years each on a charge of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.
