CAPE TOWN, South Africa (ANI): The ongoing investigation into the death of acclaimed cricket journalist Peter Roebuck will see police quiz 16 male students who lived at his home in South Africa. Roebuck had been accused of sexually assaulting a 26-year-old male Zimbabwean student before he plunged six storeys to his death from a Cape Town hotel room on November 12.
The alleged victim, Itai Gondo, claims that the 55-year-old had molested him when they met in the commentator’s room at the Southern Sun hotel in Newlands in Cape Town on November 7.
According to the Daily Mail, officers will now talk to 16 young men – aged 18 to 26 – whose education was being paid for by Roebuck and who lived at his eight-bedroom house in Pietermaritzburg.
The men are mostly Zimbabwean and many came from a home for abandoned boys in Harare.
Gondo had earlier claimed that Roebuck leapt from his hotel-room window to avoid the shame of defending himself against sexual-assault charges.
“As far as I am concerned he took his own life because he didn’t want to face the law. He didn’t want to face up to what he did. So, it’s not my problem. He is the architect of his own demise,” Gondo had said.
Gondo, who said he had not received any money for telling his story, also claims that he took his allegations to the police because he believed Roebuck might have assaulted other men.
Roebuck was in Cape Town, staying at the Southern Sun Hotel Newlands, for covering the first Test between South Africa and Australia for the Sydney Morning Herald and ABC. (ANI)