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Senior Court Reporter
TWO former employees of Fossil Agro-chemicals are in court accused of stealing herbicides worth more than US$12 000 from their employer and selling them to shop owners in Harare city centre and Mbare.
Hewett Sithole (23) allegedly bought a Toyota Altezza (ACN7276) and Nissan Liberty (ABC3177) while Pilani Alakhanani bought a Mercedes Benz B170 (AEP1932) with the money raised from their alleged criminal enterprise. The cars are held by police as exhibits.
Sithole and Alakhanani are charged with theft of Stella Star chemicals and their trial has opened at Harare Magistrates Court.
Stella Star is a soluble liquid herbicide used to control a wide range of early post-emergent grasses and broadleaf weeds in maize and sugarcane including upright star bur, pigweed, black jack, finger grass, rhodes grass and crabgrass.
Sithole and Alakhanani denied the charges when their trial opened before magistrate Mrs Barbra Mateko. The State led by Mr Tapuwanashe Zvidzai alleges that on October 18, the two were working at Fossil Agro in Msasa, Harare. Sithole entered the warehouse with a plastic bin and allegedly loaded it with a box of 10×1 litre Stella Star chemicals and pushed this bin out of the warehouse but was stopped at the exit point by a security guard, Malbar Gweshe.
Sithole was searched and found in possession of 10×1 litre Stella Star chemical.
He allegedly failed to give a satisfactory answer when questioned on where he wanted to take them to before he was handed over to the human resources manager Mr Gabriel Manditeya for further interviews.
Mr Manditeya asked Sithole to write a report and submit it to him. The court heard that Sithole took advantage and scaled over his employer’s precast wall and disappeared.
He was later arrested in Mbare and he implicated Alakhanani, who led to the recovery of 29×1 litre Stella Star chemicals from Tapiwa Mhere at his shop along Joseph Msika Street in central Harare.
It is said that Sithole and Pilani had sold four boxes of the same chemical.
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