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Liwonde First Grade Magistrate court on 7th June 2019 convicted and sentenced 33-Year-Old Peter Dzimbiri and 28-Year-Old Cassim Rashid to 7 years imprisonment with hard labour for breaking into a building and committing a felony therein contrary to section 311 of the penal code.
Nselema based State Prosecutor Sergeant Gift Kalamula told the court that during the night of 16 – 17 February unknown criminals broke the shop of Mr. Siginala Mwenda and stole goods and cash to the total of K21,643.000.00. The victim reported the matter to Nselema police and investigations into the matter started.
On 22 February the suspects went to Mr Damiano and offered him Itel phone batteries for sale.
After noticing that the two were selling the batteries at a give away price he informed the police and the police managed to arrest the two.
Searching was conducted in the suspects’ houses whereby the police recovered assorted properties from Rashid’s house.
Kalamula further told the court that Mwenda was summoned to police and he positively identified some of the stolen properties.
Rashid also failed to explain how he possessed some of the properties he was found with to the police and was also charged with another case of being found in possession of properties suspected to have been stolen which is contrary to section 329 of the penal code.
When taken before court the suspects denied the charges levelled against them.
Kalamula paraded six witnesses to prove the case and after full trial the two were found guilty and convicted accordingly.
In his submissions Kalamula told the court that the two are first offenders but regardless of that they still deserved a stiff punishment considering the fact that the properties they stole costs a lot of money and only a few were recovered.
He therefore asked the court to impose a meaningful sentence that would send a warning message to other would be offenders.
Passing his sentence First Grade Magistrate Jones Masula concurred with the state and sentenced the convicts to 7 Years Imprisonment with hard labour each for Breaking into a building and committing a felony therein and Cassim Rashid was sentenced to another 12 months imprisonment with hard labour for Being found in possession of properties suspected to have been stolen and he will serve the two sentences consecutively.
Peter Dzimbiri comes from Nthukwa village, Traditional Authority Kapeni in Blantyre while Cassim Rashid comes from Ngame village, Traditional Authority Mjoho, Mandimba District in Mozambique.
