Ex-convict gets 2 years IHL for stealing a bicycle in Mchinji

by Innocent Mvundula

The Mchinji First Grade Magistrate Court has sentenced an ex-convict, a 45-year-old Cosmas Mussa to 2 years Imprisonment with Hard Labour (IHL) for stealing a bicycle.

The court heard through Police Prosecutor sergeant Jacquiline Maseya, that in late August this year, the ex-convict met a person who was coming from buying groceries and had his bicycle knocked down.

It was further heard in court that Mussa had directed the man to a nearby Kochilira hospital where he could find some food.

She further told the jam packed court that Mussa had then taken advantage of the unsuspecting man’s absence and went away with the bicycle and the groceries he had bought.

The police prosecutor told the court that immediately after the incident, people around the hospital’s maternity wing got organised and apprehended the suspect and took him to police.

In mitigation, the convict pleaded with the court to be lenient with him saying he is the only breadwinner and that he was driven by satan.

In her submission, Maseya asked the court to mete out a stiffer punishment to the convict saying the behaviour he displayed was inhuman and being an ex-convict, he was supposed to be reformed.

She told the court that such unreformed people need to be taken out of society so that they be in reformatory centres.

Mchinji First Grade Magistrate Yohane Nkhata concurred with the state arguing that people of Mussa’s calibre are a threat and that there should be no room for them in the society, other than in the Reformatory centers.

He then handed the convict a 2- year jail term saying the sentence would help serve as a lesson to other ex-convicts and other would be offenders.

The convict hails from Kapanjira village in the area of Traditional Authority Zulu in Mchinji.

Kondwani Kandiado
Mchinji Police PRO
Cell : 0999947727
Email : kkandiado40@gmail.com

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