ZCAS student gets 3yrs for raping,assulting married girlfried

AN Information Technology specialist (IT) has been jailed for three and half years for assaulting his girlfriend who did not tell him that she was married to another man.

Elias Ngandwe 28, a student at the Zambia Centre for Accountancy Studies (ZCAS) severely beat his girlfriend Brenda Chirwa and forced her to have sex with him many times after he was angered at the discovery that she was a married woman.

Chief Resident Magistrate Joshua Banda said in sentencing Ngandwe of house number 1778 Buchi Road in Northmead that he was exercising maximum lenience but was still going to jail the convict for three and half years because incidents of people picking up objects and hitting others was on the increase.

He said there was abundant evidence before court that Ngandwe had beaten his girlfriend and his defence that she had sustained the injuries through an accident after hitting a glass table in his house was not only laughable but an afterthought.

Mr Banda said if the allegations were only based on Ms Chirwa’s testimony, the court could have not been fully convinced that the crime was committed but that other damning revelations in court by other witnesses such as a Colonel Joseph Kapembwa who had testified how he rescued Ms Chirwa from being beaten by Ngandwe near the Ethiopian Restaurant in Olympia proved the case beyond any reasonable doubt.

Mr Banda said Ms Chirwa’s evidence was contemporaneous from the time Ngandwe picked her up to take her to his house in Northmead up to the time she was examined and treated at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) of the injuries she sustained.

Particulars were that on March 4, 2012 Ngandwe accompanied Ms Chirwa to a Parent Teachers Association (PTA) meeting after which he invited her to his house in Northmead when along the way, they met Ms Chirwa’s friend only identified as Claudia whom they went with to Ngandwe’s house.

While at the house, Ngandwe demanded to know why the two women had not told him from the onset that Ms Chirwa was married and in anger he started hitting his girlfriend with all sorts of objects including a grass-cutter.

After Claudia fled in fear, Ngandwe locked Ms Chirwa in the house and continued beating her and later forced her to have sex with him.

Ngandwe and Ms Chirwa later left for the Ethiopian Restaurant in Olympia but along the way he continued beating her until she shouted for help from Col Kapembwa who was driving along Katima Mulilo road.

In his mitigation, Ngandwe pleaded with the court to exercise leniency because he had already spent close to seven months in prison and that he was an employer of three people who would suffer if he was given a custodial sentence.

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