Shrien Dewani pleads not guilty as trial begins

Mr Dewani, 34, denies plotting to kill new wife Anni on their luxury getaway to Cape Town in November 2010, as they took a cab ride through a township.

He also told the court, through his solicitor, that he was bisexual.

In a witness statement read by his counsel, Francois van Zyl, Dewani said: “My sexual interactions with males were mostly physical experiences or email chats with people I met online or in clubs, including prostitutes.”

Mr Dewani said he had abnormally low levels of hormones, rendering his chances of having children slim. He said he discussed this with Anni, whom he began dating in summer 2009.

The relationship cooled and at one point ended before they rekindled their romance in March 2010. The couple married later that year in Mumbai and honeymooned in Cape Town.

‘Kidnapped at gunpoint’

Mr Dewani claims he and his wife were kidnapped at gunpoint as they drove through Gugulethu in Cape Town in a taxi. Mr Dewani was released unharmed, but his wife’s body was found in the abandoned car the next day. She had been shot.

Prosecutors argue that Mr Dewani conspired with Cape Town residents Zola Tongo, Mziwamadoda Qwabe and Xolile Mngeni to kill his wife.

Mr van Zyl, reading Dewani’s hour-long witness statement, that the gunman told the defendant to “Look down! Lie down!”

He said: “We were both terrified and immediately complied with his demands. I was lying half on top of Anni. Another person was behind the steering wheel. I do not know where Tongo was at that stage.”

Mr Dewani said he pleaded with the attackers to let him and Anni go, but they demanded his phone.

Mr Dewani’s statement said they returned to the motorway with another driver taking control of the wheel, passing a police car which was unaware of what was happening. Taxi driver Tongo, Qwabe and Mngeni are already serving jail terms in connection with the murder.

He said Anni was screaming, and he was ordered to keep her quiet as they drove on to another side road.

He added: “The driver said that they were not going to hurt us, they just wanted the car and they were going to let us go separately. I begged them to let us go together.”

Mr Dewani said he was ordered to leave the car with a gun to his head. He left through a window as the door would not open. “The last thing I had said to Anni was to be quiet and not to say anything.”

‘Gunshot wounds’

There were gasps in court as police footage from the scene was broadcast.

Mr Dewani appeared to bow his head as forensics officers were seen to open the taxi door showing a bloodstained Anni on the back seat. Her long dark hair billowed in the gentle breeze. As the camera panned to the other side of the car, the court saw blood covering Anni’s ankles and feet.

The court heard a pathology report found gunshot wounds to Anni’s left hand and to the neck – the latter being the likely cause of death.

Members of the victim’s family have travelled from Sweden, where she was raised, to attend the hearing, which is expected to last for around two months. Before his extradition, and between months of court hearings, Mr Dewani was detained in a hospital in Britain with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It is not yet known whether he will be giving evidence in his defence. The case will not follow that of decorated South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, whose recent televised murder trial was seen as something of a landmark moment for the country’s judicial system.