Court clears doctor in ZACC obstruction case

CHINHOYI resident magistrate Nyasha Marufu has acquitted Makonde district medical officer Gift Masoja of defeating or obstructing the course of justice after ruling that the State failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The charges arose from an incident on December 4 last year during a Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) investigation into alleged bribery in the recruitment of student nurses at Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital.

According to the State, Masoja was questioned as a person of interest during the investigation. Prosecutors alleged that investigators requested him to surrender his mobile phone, but he refused and walked away, prompting ZACC to charge him with defeating or obstructing the course of justice.

However, in a judgment delivered last week, Marufu found that the prosecution had failed to establish the essential elements of the offence.

Masoja's lawyer, Tungamirai Chamutsa, argued that his client had acted within his constitutional rights because he had neither been arrested nor served with a valid search and seizure warrant when investigators demanded access to his mobile phone.

"Shielded by his constitutional right to privacy, the medical chief was under absolutely no legal obligation to surrender his private data and communications simply because state agents demanded it," Chamutsa submitted during the trial.

Throughout the proceedings, Masoja maintained that exercising his constitutional right to privacy could not constitute a criminal offence.

In her ruling, Marufu held that the State's case, which relied largely on the testimony of a ZACC legal officer, failed to demonstrate that Masoja possessed the necessary criminal intent to defeat or obstruct the course of justice.

The magistrate concluded that the prosecution had not discharged its burden of proof and acquitted Masoja of the charge.