It has emerged that the 9mm pistol believed to have been used to kill Senzo Meyiwa was stolen during a cash-in-transit (CIT) heist.

Five individuals stand accused of the 2014 murder of the Bafana Bafana goalkeeper.

Peter Jacobus Smuts, representing CIT firm SBV, confirmed in the Pretoria High Court that the weapon belonged to SBV and was reported stolen in 2013.

Previous witnesses for the prosecution had indicated that it was the firearm that fired the fatal shot that ended Meyiwa's life.

The pistol had been confiscated from Mthobisi Prince Mncube during his arrest for an unrelated taxi-related murder case in Johannesburg in 2015.

The gun's legitimate licence indicated that the Czech-made firearm, serial number 8587B, classified as a 9mm parabellum pistol, was registered to SBV Services.

Smuts revealed the weapon had been stolen during a robbery at a Johannesburg shopping centre in May 2013, where SBV officers were ambushed and disarmed. He said the firearm's serial number had been deliberately filed off from the barrel, slide, and receiver.

Nevertheless, the rifling cuts inside the barrel could be instrumental in identifying it as the murder weapon, according to ballistics expert Cornelius Roelofse's earlier testimony.

Roelofse had marked the firearm as evidence in a separate murder case, even managing to retrieve the previously obscured serial number.

The trial continues.

Compiled by staff writer