By PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE –
A TWENTY TWO-YEAR-OLD pupil of Chipata in Eastern Province will serve a life imprisonment sentence for defiling and murdering an 11-year-old girl.
After committing the horrendous act, Royd Banda killed the defenseless girl and buried the body in a shallow grave to conceal the act.
The sentence follows Banda’s decision to abandon his appeal against the life imprisonment with hard labour sentence slapped on him by the Chipata High Court in December last year.
A panel of three Supreme Court judges led by Gregory Phiri told Banda when he informed the court yesterday about his decision to abandon the appeal that he made the right decision because the bench was geared to stiffen the sentence.
When the matter came up before Justices Phiri, Munyinda Wanki and Elizabeth Muyomvwe, Banda through his lawyers from the Legal Aid Board informed the court that he was abandoning the appeal.
Mr Justice Wanki said it was good that Banda abandoned the appeal because he would have been slapped with a stiffer punishment.
Banda of Menjele Village in Eastern Province on December 25, 2013, Christmas Day defiled and murdered the girl whom he later buried in a shallow grave to conceal the crime.
Lusaka high court judge Judy Mulongoti who sat in Chipata on December 12, 2013 convicted and sentenced Banda to life imprisonment with hard labour, saying his actions were horrific, traumatising and disgraceful.
Ms Justice Mulongoti said that the prosecution had established a prima facie case against Banda in that its witnesses’ evidence was corroborating and pointed to Banda as the killer.
She said Banda’s confession to the police and other people in the village was also in line with the evidence adduced by three of the State witnesses about what transpired on the material day.
Ms Justice Mulongoti said Banda did not take into consideration the feelings of the girl’s parents when he defiled, attacked and murdered her.
Banda had given two contradictory statements to the police and the court.
He testified in court that on December 25, 2013, he headed to watch a nyau traditional dance and started drinking tujilijili after which he got drunk.
Banda said as he headed home, he ended up falling in the mud water, soiling his trousers because he was losing balance and not that his trousers was muddy after the struggle with the girl in the bush.
He had confessed to the police of killing the girl after she threatened to report him to her parents for defiling her.
Banda told the police that the girl was the one who forced him to have sex with her in the bush but after she saw her big manhood, she changed her mind and told him that she would report him to her mother.