By PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE –

A TWENTY-EIGHT-YEAR-OLD man of Makeni in Lusaka has been sentenced to death by hanging for defiling and later strangling his 35-month-old daughter.
Judge Nicola Sharpe-Phiri said Nalyela Mwakamui should be hanged by the neck until he was pronounced dead because his act on the baby was ruthless and barbaric.
Ms Justice Sharpe-Phiri said the sentence was necessary, to send a strong message that such violence perpetrated on babies would not be tolerated in society.
Ms Justice Sharpe-Phiri said yesterday when she sentenced Mwakamui that there was no normal father who could defile and inflict injuries on his own child and expect to be left living freely in society.
Mwakamui on November 29, 2009 sexually abused his daughter resulting in her sustaining a ruptured kidney, liver and fractured head.
The girl was left in Mwakamui’s custody by his wife Matildah Mwiinga, who had gone to her mother’s place to cook nshima for the family.
But instead of offering protection to the baby, Mwakamui sexually molested her before she died later at the University Teaching Hospital.
He stood outside watching his wife who was trying to save the girl’s life and offered to compensate his wife with money for the death of the girl.
Mwakamui fled to Mazabuka in Southern Province where he was arrested this year.
Ms Justice Sharpe-Phiri said Mwakamui was a cold-hearted man who did not bother to escort his wife to the clinic to seek medication for the girl or attend his child’s funeral.
She said the best punishment for people like Mwakamui was the mandatory sentence of murder, which was to hang by the neck until pronounced dead.
Ms Justice Sharpe-Phiri said there were no extenuating circumstances to warrant her not to give the convict a mandatory sentence for murder because even his mitigation that he was not in his right mind when he conducted himself in a manner he did was not part of his defence but was only brought up during mitigation.
She said the girl went through a lot of pain resulting from the sexual abuse, strangulation and rupturing of her kidney and liver by her father.
Ms Justice Sharpe-Phiri said that Mwakamui had a duty of offering protection to his daughter and not cause brutal injuries and killing her.
She said it was incomprehensible that a father would inflict such atrocity on a child.