Relatives of a Beitbridge man accused of raping his 13-year-old daughter are said to have orchestrated the disappearance of the victim’s sister, one of the key witnesses in the ongoing case in Beitbridge District Court.
The same witness, also a minor, is also suspected of being pregnant and may have been concealed to conceal a related crime and also to weaken the case.
Investigating officer Constable Alan Corrado told the court last week that he had left the witness at the Takalani Children’s Home for safekeeping, but she had disappeared from the home.
I came back and heard the witness climb the wall and disappear. “I also heard during my investigations that she may have received help from people who were outside,” Corrado told the court.
“At a later stage, some of the workers at the home informed me that some relatives of the same witness, who is the daughter of the accused, took her clothes after she disappeared. After that, we filed a missing person report from the children’s home. “We are still searching for the witness and the investigations are continuing,” Corrado said, adding that before her disappearance, the witness informed him that she was pregnant.
The complainant recently told the court that she had once told the missing witness that their father was raping her.
After the missing girl became suspicious of the complainant, the complainant and her now missing sister switched places to sleep, and the father allegedly came one night and touched the complainant’s sister, discovered that she was not the complainant and left the room.
The complainant in the case told the court that his father raped her for ritual purposes.
Tsitsi Mutukwa, the prosecutor, closed the state case and the accused’s lawyer, Moshinrebe Nyeri, said he had applied for the accused to be released upon conclusion of the state case, citing lack of evidence.
Regional Judge Innocent Pibora is expected to make a decision on whether the accused should be presented for defence.
The man, a well-known cross-border transport worker in Beitbridge, is accused of raping his 16-year-old daughter several times over three years. However, he denies the charge despite his wife’s admission that she helped terminate the child’s pregnancy as a result of rape.
The accused’s wife, who is the complainant’s stepmother, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment for her role in helping to administer pills allegedly intended to abort the complainant’s pregnancy. Newsday
