Batatawala challenges ACB on amendments

Lawyers representing businessman Abdul Karim Batatawala have challenged the Anti-Corruption Bureau’s (ACB) move to amend and add new charges to his contract case at an advanced stage.

The bureau, in its recent application, also wants to call new witnesses after it already paraded eight, some of them key, who have been cross-examined by the defence.

Batatawala, appearing before Blantyre Senior Resident Magistrate’s Court, is being accused alongside former Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services chief immigration officer Elvis Thodi and two others of charges relating to a contract the businessman had with the department.

One of the lawyers representing Batatawala, Alexious Nampota, told the court that allowing the application to amend or bring new charges and calling new witnesses when the case was coming to conclusion would be tantamount to starting a new trial altogether.

Presiding magistrate Martin Chipofya gave the defence 10 days to file a written application rejecting ACB’s move and the court would converge on October 28 to hear it.

Nampota said the bureau was making fresh disclosures and statements and applying to bring new witnesses which were not disclosed at the beginning of the trial.

“Our client is worried because this flouts the right to a fair trial. It is unacceptable to bring new facts, new evidence when we are done with eight prosecution witnesses, many of them key. Some of the witness statements were taken as recently as August this year,” he said later in an interview.

The lawyer also said they were worried and they told the court they did not understand why ACB arrested their client when they had not completed investigations.

But ACB director general Martha Chizuma, after her appearance in the chamber recently, told this newspaper in an interview that their application is backed by Section 151 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Code.

She said the bureau filed and served the proposed amended charge sheet on September 27, but could not disclose details of the new charges.

Batatawala, alongside Thodi, Immigration’s commissioner responsible for operations Fletcher Nyirenda and deputy director Limbani Chawinga are answering the first count of conspiracy to defraud by allegedly inflating the market price of lockers procured by the department, among other charges. 

The four were arrested mid-December last year.