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Court Reporter
Complaints have been laid against Harare lawyer Mr Tendai Biti with the Law Society of Zimbabwe and Gender Commission by the Russian national who alleges she was manhandled during an altercation outside Harare Magistrates’ Court.
Ms Tatiana Aleshina and Mr Biti allegedly had a heated exchange during which Aleshina says she was manhandled. She filed an assault report with the police and has now lodged the two further complaints.
Mr Biti has denied any wrongdoing.
In her complaint lodged with the Law Society, Ms Aleshina wants Mr Biti investigated for alleged gross unprofessional conduct and alleges she and her workmates were verbally abused each time they came to court. Ms Aleshina is one of the witnesses in the Katsimberis criminal cases still pending.
“While attending to these matters at Harare Magistrates’ Court, I and my colleague at Pokugara Properties (Private) Limited have been victims of Mr Biti’s unsolicited verbal abuse and assaults which amount to gross professional misconduct,” said Ms Aleshina, the chief operating officer of Pokugara.
She claimed that on August 29 this year, as she was about to leave the court gallery after the court session and in the company of her workmate Mr Simbarashe Kadye the company’s chief finance officer, Biti confronted them and said: “I am going to take your house, clothes and panties and leave you with nothing. I am not joking!”
He then allegedly turned to Ms Aleshina reportedly shouting she was very stupid. “It was clear to all people who were in court gallery that Mr Biti took delight not only in verbally abusing me, but in trying to intimidate me and felt that, as a woman and foreigner of Russian origins, I was a nonentity to him and that he would use every extra judicial means to crush me or harm or destroy me for daring to be a witness in the criminal matter against his client,” she stated in her complaint.
“I strongly feel Mr Biti also violated my rights as a woman by trying to show his man power over me by swearing and shouting at me in a way which clearly made me less human thereby humiliating me. His conduct in pointing against my face was a clear act of verbal assault.”
Ms Aleshina who said she had no personal issue with Mr Biti before this incident.
“His conduct is a threat to womanhood and to the powerless and takes us back to the stone age where the perceived powerful will tremble on the rights of the poor without any censure.”
Ms Aleshina filed a similar complaint with the Gender Commission.
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