POLICE have arrested a 39-year-old shopkeeper accused of setting alight four young boys, one of whom died from his injuries, after accusing them of stealing sweets. The man, who is also an advisor to the provincial education department, apparently fetched the boys from school and took them to his shop, where he locked them up and asked them who had stolen sweets from the business. He apparently kicked and punched the children and then doused them with petrol. “He set a piece of cloth alight and tossed it into the room where the children were,” Lotty Mphuti, grandmother of the child who died, told the Sowetan newspaper. “He then closed the door. Three of the boys escaped and I could hear my grandson Obed screaming. Suddenly he emerged in a ball of fire. He was lifted into the air as if flung by something powerful. When he landed on the ground, we poured water on him.” Obed Kagiso Mphuti died hours later in hospital. – AFP