Security boss denied bail for fifth time in murder case

Security company boss Ferrel Govender, who along with his brother Darren is standing trial for the murder of Umhlanga businessman Shailen Singh in December 2024, has been denied bail for the fifth time.

Durban high court judge Jacqui Henriques, who heard Govender’s application to present “new facts” in a further bail application in July on the eve of the start of his trial, said these supposed new facts had previously been raised in bail proceedings.

“These are not new facts, but are merely old facts being fashioned into new facts. It is a reshuffling of old facts,” she said in her ruling handed down on Monday.

The murder trial has been ongoing before judge Mbuzeni Mathenjwa in the Durban high court. It has been set down for further hearings for five weeks in May and June 2027.

The state alleges that the Govender brothers gunned down Singh at Umhlanga’s Meridien Park because Ferrel believed he was having an affair with his girlfriend.

The brothers were arrested in January 2025 when they handed themselves over to police.

After a formal bail application, magistrate Kevin Bruorton granted bail to Darren but ruled that Ferrel must remain behind bars.

Ferrel then lodged an unsuccessful appeal, which came before judge Vusi Nkosi in March. He petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal but that was also unsuccessful.

The brothers first appeared in the high court in November 2025.

Bruorton then heard Ferrel’s first application on “new facts”. He again refused to grant him bail.

In May 2026, Ferrel launched his second application on new facts. Ordinarily, this would have been heard by Bruorton but he had subsequently retired.

While Ferrel’s lawyers insisted that another magistrate could hear it, ultimately Henriques ruled that since the matter had been transferred from the magistrate’s court for trial, the high court now had jurisdiction.

Ferrel claimed the new facts included that Bruorton had disclosed to his former attorney, Ravindra Maniklal, that someone had pushed a “dossier” under his office door, containing information about him. Bruorton said he had thrown it away and had not looked at it.

However, Ferrel said he now had an apprehension that the magistrate could have been biased.

He also said there were discrepancies with the time stamps of the CCTV footage (which showed the brothers at the crime scene) and the traffic camera footage.

Regarding the finding that he would interfere with witnesses, he said if he were freed, he would relocate to Johannesburg, wear a 24-hour tracking device and the police could also monitor his movements through a car tracker.

He tendered R3m in bail.

Henriques said aspects of the CCTV footage were canvassed in the initial and the first “new fact” bail applications before Bruorton and the appeal before Nkosi.

Footage of their vehicles moving in tandem towards and away from the scene was known to the brothers in September 2025, prior to the first “new fact” application.

Regarding his offer to relocate to Johannesburg, Henriques said this was not a new fact.

On the “dossier” that was pushed under the magistrate’s door, she said it appeared to be related to publicly available information relating to Ferrel, which was circulated on social media.

“It was not a dossier, which has a more sinister connotation.”

This, too, had been dealt with at the first “new fact” application.

She said that she was not satisfied that the issues he had raised, coupled with his offer to relocate, “tip the scales in his favour as constituting exceptional circumstances, which, in the interests of justice, warrant his release on bail”.

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly…. I am mindful that courts always lean in favour of a person’s liberty. This matter, however, does not concern a first-time applicant for bail. It is his fifth attempt.”

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