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Yaganathan Pillay, also known as Teddy Mafia, was shot and killed in Shallcross on Monday, January 4. (Image: YouTube)
Notorious drug lord Yaganathan Pillay, better known as Teddy Mafia, was shot dead at his home in Shallcross in Durban on Monday afternoon. Police arrived in the area after two men possibly behind the shooting were set on fire and beheaded.
The latest alleged gang shooting to rocked the South African underworld has taken a horrendous turn in a Durban suburb with the burning of two men who were later beheaded. The gruesome murders occurred after a man with a reputation for being a drug lord was shot twice in the head.
The incident, the latest in a series of shootings in KwaZulu-Natal, occurred on Monday afternoon.
Gangs in Durban are believed to operate with criminals in other provinces, including the Western Cape, South Africa’s most intense gangster hotspot that in recent years has seen a series of high-profile killings, some with possible links to the international organized crime.
There are also strong suspicions that criminals sometimes hire murderers from other provinces to commit murders, who then return to their home areas.
In Monday’s incident in Durban, it was believed that around 2 p.m. Pillay told her daughter that she expected visitors at her home in Shallcross.
But it seems that armed men had arrived; it was not clear if they were the visitors Pillay expected.
“Upon the suspects’ arrival at her home, the daughter went to the back of her property where she heard gunshots,” said police spokesman Jay Naicker.
“The daughter later established that her father had been shot.”
A large crowd gathered and Naicker said “the community detained the two suspects and set them on fire, then beheaded both of them.”
Naicker added that when the police arrived at the scene, the residents shot them. Public order police officers were called in and managed to disperse the crowd with rubber bullets. No firearms were seized at the scene.
Durban Metropolitan Police spokesman Chief Superintendent Parboo Sewpersad said Pillay had been shot twice in the head.
They put him in a vehicle and rushed him to Chatsmed hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
By late Monday afternoon, Sewpersad said about 200 people had gathered at the hospital. Law enforcement officers had tried to disperse the crowd.
He said it was not yet clear what had happened as residents at the site were unwilling to release information.
Some were reportedly afraid to provide details of what happened, while others were intent on protecting what one source described as “the gang.”
Sewpersad confirmed that it was not the first time that residents of the area attacked police officers. In January 2019 it was reported that Some 200 residents had turned on officers conducting a drug bust in Shallcross, on the same street where Pillay lived.
And in March 2020, Pillay’s son Devendren was fatally injured in a drive-by shooting in Shallcross. That same month it was reported that his wife’s cousin had been killed in a shooting in Northdene.
In April 2020, Pillay was arrested on unlicensed firearms charges and was subsequently released on bail.
Months later, in November, it was reported that a Chatsworth police officer, Trevor Chetty, had been fired for following his commanding officer’s instructions to escort Pillay home after a court appearance the month after her arrest. This escort was captured on video.
A second police officer had been suspended without pay for a month.
Chetty supposedly said to Sunday grandstand: “I am a family man who went to work to put food on the table for my wife and seven-year-old son, but I was fired for following the instructions of a superior officer who was not touched. I did not do anything wrong.”
In another fatal shooting that recently rocked Durban, Simone Jasmine of Wentworth was shot and killed in October 2020. She had reportedly been a leader of the Cartel gang. DM
