adminNokusa Masuku Court Reporter
A PUPIL at Msiteli High School in Bulawayo who was caught with a leaked Ordinary Level Mathematics examination paper will receive two strokes while his 21-year-old brother who supplied him with the paper has been jailed for nine months.
The strokes will be administered by trained officers at Bulawayo Prison.
His brother, 21, was sentenced to 12 months in jail but will serve an effective nine months in prison after three months were suspended for five years on condition that he does not commit a similar offence.
The brothers appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Tancy Dube facing a charge of unlawfully gaining access to examination materials.
They were found guilty.
Magistrate Dube said she had considered imposing a fine and community service for the pupil but saw it fit to settle for the jail sentence and the two strokes saying leaking examination papers was a serious offence.
“In coming up with this, I considered a fine but it will trivialise this case and won’t be appropriate for a juvenile. I also considered community service but it was also inappropriate since the juvenile is a pupil. However, this is a serious offence which has affected the whole nation and pupils will have to rewrite the exams. As a result you will have to be punished for committing this offence,” said Dube.
The boy, 17, was caught cheating in the exam room last Thursday. Police arrested the pupil together with his brother who gave him the leaked paper.
The court heard that the pupil was sitting his examinations at Msiteli High School when an invigilator spotted him copying answers from a written piece of paper.
Shava said the invigilator quickly alerted the authorities who then called the police leading to the pupil’s arrest. He said when the pupil was interrogated, he implicated his brother.
The brother told the police that he got the paper from his aunt who resides in Gweru.
derick.khumalo