Fatima's body was found in a pool of blood at their Nirvana home in Limpopo after they allegedly had a fight.
Rameez Patel appears in the Limpopo High Court in Polokwane. Picture: NPA
Convicted murderer Rameez Patel has been dealt a blow and will continue serving his life sentence behind bars after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed his application for leave to appeal.
The SCA handed down the judgment last week.
Patel filed the application on 12 May from prison, through his lawyer, Saleem Khan, challenging his conviction and sentence handed down in the Limpopo High Court in December.
Judgment
The SCA ruled that Patel’s application had no prospect of success.
“Having considered the notice of motion and other documents filed, it is ordered that the application for leave to appeal is dismissed on the grounds that there are no reasonable prospects of success and there is no other compelling reason why an appeal should be heard.”
Patel requested that sections of the judgment be revisited by a different court, as he insisted, as he pleaded, that he was not guilty of the 2015 murder of his first wife, Fatima.
Patel’s bail of R250 000 was revoked after the ruling, and he was taken to a holding cell.
Life in jail
Judge Joseph Raulinga sentenced Patel to life imprisonment for the premeditated murder of Fatima in December 2025.
The court added five years for possession of an unlicensed firearm and three years for possession of illegal ammunition. The court also declared Patel – who pleaded not guilty when the trial began in 2016 – unfit to possess a firearm.
‘No remorse’
Handing down the sentence, Raulinga noted that sentencing required careful consideration of all relevant factors.
Raulinga said Patel had shown zero remorse, describing the case as one of Limpopo’s most harrowing instances of femicide.
In November 2025, Patel Khan filed two urgent applications: For the court to provide a summary of the pre-sentence report and for Patel’s bail to be extended until the sentencing concludes.
Khan argued that Rameez was the sole proprietor of his business and that his bail needed to be extended before a sentence could be imposed so that he could put his affairs in order.
‘You killed her’
Raulinga ruled that it would not be in the interests of justice to grant Rameez bail.
“Mr Patel, your wife is no more, and you know better than us what happened. You killed her. But for now, Mr Patel, I can’t allow you to go out. Your application fails, and the bail is revoked, and you must go into incarceration.”
Experts argued that Fatima sustained fatal blunt force trauma to her head, presumably caused by a heavy object, possibly a cricket bat.
Fatima’s murder
Fatima’s body was found in a pool of blood at their Nirvana home in Limpopo after they allegedly had a fight.
An autopsy by forensic pathologist Dr Thakadu Mamashela revealed that Fatima was executed with a single shot to the head, indicating that at some point before her death, she was strangled and suffered blunt force trauma that dislocated her jaw, possibly caused by a cricket bat that was recovered from the ceiling of the apartment.
Other accusations
Rameez was also accused of killing his mother, Muhajeen, in front of her domestic worker. This case was provisionally withdrawn in 2021 due to insufficient evidence.
Rameez’s father, Firoz, was killed in an unsolved robbery, while Yunus Mayet, the father of his current wife, Nasreen, was kidnapped and murdered.
In 2018, his brother Razeen was shot days before he was due to testify against Rameez.
Rameez was released on bail in 2015 after being granted R250 000 bail.
