Australian convicted of attempted murder in Cape Town

A South African court has convicted an Australian of attempted murder for trying to hire a hit-man to kill the father of a woman he had become obsessed with, local media said Thursday.

Shumsheer Singh Ghumman, 32, was arrested in Cape Town in January on charges of throwing a petrol-bomb at the home of Hannah Rhind’s parents in the upmarket suburb of Clifton.

Police say Ghumman, a London-based accountant, met Rhind in Britain in 2009 and became friends with the South African, before she accused him of stalking her.

Ghumman was later convicted of harassment in a British court.

The Times newspaper said besides petrol-bombing the Rhind family’s house, Ghumman also posed as a journalist and asked a Cape Town newspaper editor to put him in touch with local gangsters for a story he was working on.

The editor of the West Cape News said he had received an email asking for help finding “someone who has absolutely no compunction about behaving with appalling violence,” The Times said.

The editor put Ghumman in touch with a man named Alfred Yalezo, whom Ghumman offered to pay 10,000 rand ($1,300) to murder Rhind’s father, The Times said. Yalezo instead told the Rhind family, who called the police.