By Wendell Roelf

Dina Rodrigues, the woman accused of ordering the murder of a Cape Town baby, will remain in custody after the Wynberg magistrate's court revoked her bail on Friday.

Two families on opposite sides of the baby murder case wept when Magistrate Hafiza Mohamed announced that bail had been withdrawn.

Dina Rodrigues, 24, was found by the court to have broken conditions set on July 6 when she was granted bail of R20 000.

'The accused broke the law and the accused is at fault'

The court on Friday found she had sent SMS messages to two state witnesses - Neil Wilson and Natasha Norton - despite having been instructed not to have any direct or indirect contact with witnesses as part of the bail conditions.

Handing down judgment following a two-fold application by the state to have Rodrigues's bail revoked, Mohamed said the breach of bail conditions was "extremely serious" and found the accused had "undermined" the justice system.

Mohamed said the accused faced one of the most "serious and heinous crimes" and it would be a travesty of justice if the state's application was refused.

"The law is clear. The accused broke the law and the accused is at fault."

The state earlier brought the application to revoke bail, claiming Rodrigues had contacted witnesses and that new evidence was available since the original bail hearing.

'The state's evidence is almost entirely made up of hearsay'

Among the new evidence was the fact that Rodrigues's fingerprints were found on a courier waybill at the scene of the crime, and subpoenaed data from cellphone providers showed phones in her possession had been used to contact her fellow co-accused, Sipho Mfazwe, before and after the murder.

Mfazwe, Mongezi Bobotyane, Zanethemba Gwada and a 16-year-old youth stand accused of slitting the throat of six-month-old Jordan Leigh Norton, after gaining access to the Norton household under the pretext of delivering a package.

The three men are in custody after being denied bail, while the youth is serving a sentence for an unrelated crime.

On Friday, Mohamed dismissed the defence's submission that cellphone records showing SMS messages were sent was "flimsy".

Mohamed also questioned the veracity of an affidavit by Rodrigues, handed in on Thursday, in which she suggested her friends were responsible for contacting the state witnesses.

Mohamed said it was "highly improbable" that her friends sent the messages, concluding also that the SMS messages to Wilson were meant to intimidate him.

Earlier in court, prosecutor Nico Breylt said cellphone handsets seized during a search of the Milnerton home where Rodrigues was placed under 24-hour house arrest were used to send SMS messages to witnesses Wilson and Norton - the biological parents of Jordan-Leigh.

Advocate for Rodrigues, John van der Berg, said the state's contention that his client had been in physical possession of the seized Nokia handset was not borne out by evidence before the court.

"Suggesting Rodrigues got rid of an incriminating sim card was out-and-out speculation," he said.

"The state's evidence is almost entirely made up of hearsay".

Van der Berg submitted that in the event of a "technical breach" of the bail conditions, then the correct approach would be upholding the status quo.

Van der berg said it would be a "drastic move" to disturb the status quo and return a person from freedom into custody on the basis of "flimsy snippets of evidence". - Sapa