Student’s family make dreaded decision

[caption id="attachment_95370" align="alignright" width="164"] Asadullah Ajimudin[/caption]

THE ventilator which is keeping alive an NMMU student, who was savagely bludgeoned with a cricket bat in his Summerstrand flatlet on Saturday, is expected to be switched off today.

Second-year computer science and applied mathematics student Asadullah Ajimudin, 19, who was beaten into a coma during a robbery, received his last medical treatment yesterday morning.

By 8.30pm yesterday, the treatment had been unsuccessful in reducing the extensive swelling on the brain caused by the attack.

Asadullah’s family were keeping vigil at his bedside last night.

“They [the attackers] are savages – ruthless savages,” his father, Sayed Jalaluddin Ajimudin, 48, said outside the intensive care unit at St George’s Hospital last night.

“I really hope that they get caught soon and get put away for life.”

Asadullah would have turned 20 on August 26.

His father and mother, Fatima, 40, rushed from the family home in Kimberley in the Northern Cape immediately after being informed of the 4am attack on their son, who was left for dead in his Ben Viljoen Street flatlet in a suspected robbery.

The senseless beating shocked his friends, family and security personal who responded to the incident.

A surprisingly calm Ajimudin spoke candidly last night about his son’s condition, intimating that there was nothing more that could be done to save him.

“He has very extensive injuries,” Ajimudin said.

“I am told by doctors that, as a result of the attack, he suffered a stroke which left the left side of his body paralysed and he would also no longer be able to speak.

“Besides this, the efforts to reduce the swelling in his brain have been unsuccessful.

“He was given the last medication at 10am [yesterday], and this has failed to reduce the swelling or improve his condition.

-Shaun Gillham