Andrew
A 16-year-old girl of Choma district in Zambia has testified in court how her biological father tried to kill her after getting her pregnant.
Byta FM Choma Court journalist reports that Patson Lweendo (40) is accused of having carnal knowledge of his daughter five times and consequently impregnating her.
Lweendo is answering to charges of incest in the Choma Magistrates Court, an allegation that he denies while accusing his wife and the girl of implicating him so that she could get married to another man.
But the girl demonstrated how her father pushed her pants to the side and forced himself on her before threatening to kill her with his homemade gun every time he finished harvesting her innocence.
The state witness says she never told anyone until her mother suspected she was pregnant.
She further accuses her father of hiring a hitman to kill her, but says the man instead reported the matter to the police.
Meanwhile, Trust Sinzala confirmed that Lweendo approached him to bewitch his daughter to kill the evidence, but says he refused and instead reported the matter to the police because he has never killed anyone.
The victim’s mother, Matilda Mweetwa, also testified that Lweendo beat up the girl when she wanted to tell her what was happening while she was away.
During cross examination, Lweendo argued that his wife and daughter want him arrested so that she can get married to another man.
Senior resident magistrate Selia Kanunka has since adjourned the matter to March 1, 2022.
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Lost false teeth returned
after 11 years
A British man said he was left open-mouthed after Spanish authorities returned the false teeth he lost on a boozy night out in Benidorm 11 years ago, the BBC reported.
Paul Bishop (63) misplaced his teeth in the popular resort in 2011 when he fell ill while drinking cider and had to vomit into a bin.
“When we headed to the next bar, my friend then turned round to me and asked where my teeth were,” he told the broadcaster.
A search proved fruitless but he said he was “gobsmacked and stunned” when the long-lost dentures turned up at his home in Stalybridge, near Manchester, northwest England.
He ended up paying £600 (about US$814) on a new set, certain that he would never see them again, according to Sky News.
Despite attempts to find them, he had to spend the rest of the holiday without gnashers, even performing as a toothless Elvis for his friend’s 50th birthday, the broadcaster reported.
They had been found in a Spanish landfill.
“Next thing you know, they have found my DNA and address from British records and popped it in the post,” he added.
Bishop, who was pictured with the errant gnashers in a plastic bag, described the return as “unbelievable”.
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‘Conman’ marries 14 women
in 7 different states
A 54-year-old man has been tagged “the Indian Tinder Swindler” after marrying 14 women across India and scamming them out of thousands of pounds.
The man identified as Bidhu Prakash Swain, who is often aliased as Ramesh Swain, has been arrested by the police after primarily targeting middle-aged women and divorcees.
Bidhu is also alleged to have fraudulently posed as a doctor at the Union Health Ministry.
“His targets were highly educated and those who worked in senior positions at various government and private organisations. He had his eyes on their money,” the police disclosed.
One of his alleged victims was an advocate at the Supreme Court and a senior Central Armed Police Forces official.
He later married the woman and is accused of duping her out of nearly £10 000.
Swain’s victims were not always people either, it is said.
He took it one step further and scammed organisations and sacred places of worship.
He managed to scam the Gurdwara, where one of his marriages was solemnised, out of almost £11 000 with the promise of building a hospital, his accusers claim.
According to the news outlet, Swain is a father of five children and had married
for the first time in 1982 and then again in 2022.
Between 2002 and 2020, he had befriended many women and married them too.
He is accused of securing the marriages, staying with women for a few days and then leaving them at their parents’ homes while he travelled for work.
A Delhi-based teacher filed a complaint in July 2021. After spending a few months with him in Bhubaneswar, she said she realised he was a fraud. Upon arrest, officials say they discovered he had fooled 13 more women he met on social media and matrimonial sites.
The police say they recovered 11 cash cards, four identification cards with different names and a school certificate using a separate identity. He was also defrauding unemployed youths with the promise of providing jobs or securing admissions on medicine courses while posing as the deputy director-general of the Central Health Education and Training, it is alleged.
The police will seek Swain’s remand.
“If needed, an all-women team will be formed for further probe. A professional counsellor will also be included in the team for counselling his victims,” the DCP said.
“We are planning to conduct a detailed financial investigation in the fraud. We will seek longer remand of the accused for a detailed probe,” said DCP Umashankar Dash. — Wires.
Bongani Ndlovu
Online Reporter