Cops suffer blow in Kombi driver assault case

A kombi driver who allegedly assaulted three police officers after they tried to arrest him for dropping passengers at an undesignated area has been found not guilty and discharged due to lack of evidence.

Emmanuel Ncube of Khami Prison area was denying the charges of assaulting or resisting a peace officer when he appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Charity Maphosa.

When he was put on his defence he told the court that the three police officers whom he did not know if they were police officers as they were in civilian clothing jumped into his kombi and he never assaulted any one of them.

Maphosa said the state failed to prove a prima facie case against Ncube and she was left with no other option rather than finding him not guilty and acquitting him.

Prosecutor Danmore Kasenza had told the court that on March 6 at 9am, a police officer Simbarashe Chifamba who was accompanied by two constables - only identified as Maweni and Mathobela - was on patrol in the city centre.

The three spotted Ncube dropping passengers along Herbert Chitepo Street and immediately jumped into his vehicle.

Ncube saw the police officers in the car and sped off, injuring a passenger Qondani Khumalo who was alighting.

He drove for 50m before stopping and assaulting Chifamba. The police officers managed to subdue Ncube and arrested him.

This case comes two weeks after the Bulawayo magistrate Tinashe Tashinga lambasted the police officers who had arrested former Lupane MP Njabuliso Mguni for driving a vehicle that had a defective number plate and no indicator light. They then wrote his offences on the rough piece of paper after he refused to pay a spot fine. They also impounded his vehicle only to be ordered by the High Court to releases it after he produced its registration book.

But the cops desperately decided to press other charges and dragged him to the magistrate court before Tashinga for violating traffic offence.

The magistrate  warned and cautioned him before discharging him at the same time lambasting the police officers for violating his rights by not conducting themselves properly and providing proper stationary for the offence they charged him for.

He upheld Mguni's lawyer Lizwe Jamela' submissions that he must just be warned and discharged.