Times of Zambia | Six killers to hang …Tobias Mwale, Katete teacher who butchered nurse wife with machete in jealous rage among six men sentenced to death by High Court judges in Chipata and Lusaka

Published On April 27, 2018 » 4364 Views» By Evans Musenya Manda » HOME SLIDE SHOW, SHOWCASE

0 stars

By JULIUS PHIRI & PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE –

.High-Curt

The Katete teacher who butchered his wife with a machete last year is to hang for the brutal killing.
Tobias Mwale, who slashed his wife, Mumba Kalaba, to death with a machete in July last year, was one of four persons sentenced to death by the Chipata High Court for separate convictions of murder.
In Lusaka, two men believed to have been members of a notorious gang known as ‘Boko Haram’ were dealt the sentence for murdering two women on different dates.
Lusaka High Court Judge, Mr justice Mwila Chitabo has directed that Zondani Mtonga and Nchimunya Ng’andu be hanged by their necks until pronounced dead for murdering Priscilla Mulinda and Nodzi Sibanda in 2015.
Sitting in Chipata on Wednesday, High Court Judge Mwamba Chanda sentenced Mwale, 33, a teacher of Omelo Mumba Primary School in Katete district who murdered his wife Kalaba, a midwife at Kasama General Hospital following a marital dispute on July 16th last year.
The prosecution called nine witnesses who testified against Mwale.
The court heard that Mwale killed his wife using a machete after allegedly discovering love messages from another man on her mobile phone.
The case shocked the nation by the sheer brutality of Mwale’s assault on his wife, who was a student nurse in Kasama but had travelled home to Katete on holiday when she was killed.
Passing judgment, Ms Justice Chanda said prosecution had proved a case of murder against the accused beyond reasonable doubt and sentenced Mwale to death.
“The case you committed is very serious. The prosecution team proved the case beyond reasonable doubt and I now sentence you to death by hanging until pronounced dead by a certified medical doctor,” she told the convict who did not mitigate.
In other cases, Ms Justice Chanda also sentenced Veronica Tembo of Katete to death for murdering her newly born baby.
Tembo in June last year dumped her baby in a pit latrine.
Ms Justice Chanda said Tembo confirmed that she dumped her newly born baby in a pit latrine.
The judge also pronounced the death sentence for Yohane Liwonde of Chipata murdering his uncle, Saizi Mbewe, in November 2015 after accusing him of stealing his mother’s household goods.
Ms Justice Chanda also sentenced Tembo Lungu of Nyimba to death by hanging for murdering his friend, Peter Phiri in July 2016.
In the Lusaka ‘Boko Haram’ case, the High Court heard that Mtonga and Ng’andu had lain in ambush to kill two women on two different dates in February 2015 and April 2015 in Garden and Mandevu townships respectively, using knives and screwdrivers.
In one of the cases, the made off with a handbag belonging to Ms Mulinda which contained K2,500, leaving her for dead after savaging her.
The money was shared between them and another two who were their co-accused and used it for paying rentals, buying clothes and other expenses.
There was no direct evidence linking the duo to the attacks and murders, but they individually confessed to the police how they ambushed the women, attacked them and stole the money.
Postmortem done on the two women showed fatal injuries to their necks, backs and heads, matching the details of the attacks given in the confession statements given by the accused.
Mr Justice Chitabo said in his judgment delivered yesterday that he was satisfied that the police had discharged their duty to prove their case beyond any reasonable doubt.
He said described the actions the convicts as “totally senseless”.
Mtonga and Ng’andu told the police how they would prowl the residential areas of Meanwood, Kabulonga, Garden and Mandevu in search of victims to attack.
On April 5 2015, Mtonga and Ng’andu around 04 hours and 05 hours attacked Ms Mulinda by stabbing her with a knife and stole her handbag which contained money, which they went to count and shared at a house belonging to one of the gang members.
Earlier in February 17, 2015 they had attacked Ms Sibanda, who was in the company of a man who run away, stabbed her with a screwdriver.
Mtonga and Ng’andu attacked Ms Sibanda with a view of raping her, but after she indicated that she knew Zondani, they stabbed her before dumping her body in a makeshift building in Mandevu near Warrior tavern.
Mr Justice Chitabo said the men were guilty because they participated in the murdering of Ms Mulinda and Sibanda and their claims that they were beaten by police to confess to the killings were an afterthought.