Some criminals have all the luck

Something about the arrest of Kondwani Guta, a police officer serving suspension for robbery, and the death of Perekani Malunga in prison, makes for depressing reading.

Guta was based at Chilobwe Police Station when he was caught red-handed robbing—with his accomplices—a businessman in Limbe in December last year. The court granted him bail and his prosecution actually started but somewhere along the way, it stalled, probably because the police were still conducting investigations or yet to persuade witnesses to testify.

It was also around the same time that Malunga was arrested for his alleged involvement in another armed robbery at FMB in Limbe in which a police officer lost his life.

Their crimes and arrests were committed against a backdrop of rising violent crimes, in which police officers and criminals were competing for space and targets to rob. The common theme running along the suspects is that most were serving bail for previous violent crimes.

While Guta had his day in court—and was probably looking forward to its conclusion—Malunga was not as lucky, if that would be the right term to use. He died still waiting for his day in court. Justice was never done. He was still a suspect and needed his day in court to prove his innocence or for the court to show his culpability. Was he guilty? Was he innocent? We will never know. His culpability will be buried in the mist of conjecture.

Guta has profited from an incurably lethargic justice system that recently consigned a 13-year-old girl accused of rogue and vagabond to an adult prison in three days but lets him, caught red-handed committing a crime—and with a police gun to boot—out to roam the streets. He duly struck again in Chikwawa last week in events that eerie echoes of his previous crime, sans the police gun. I am not saying he is guilty of this or the previous case. And I am not saying he is not innocent either.

But the delay in concluding the previous case is mind-boggling.

It has become the measure of justice that prosecution authorities almost always go to court to seek more time for investigations while an accused is incarcerated in prison. One assumes that when the police take their cases to court they are prepared. Not just to keep someone in jail while they are conducting investigations.

I have always wondered why do prosecution authorities rush to arrest suspects, take them to court and when they are asking for bail, as is their right, the State will always object on the grounds that are still conducting investigations and they fear the suspects will tamper with investigations. I take that to mean prosecution authorities take half-baked cases to court and are trying to build evidence while you rot in jail. They might even have no case against you. Of course, there are some cases where suspects could interfere with evidence, but this has become so routine as to have become the byword for incompetence.

A combine justice and reformatory system that acted with atypical expediency to consign a 13-year-old child to penitence behind bars for rogue and vagabond has, in the past week, exposed for its sluggishness in ways it could not have imagined.

That kid was no threat to anyone. She was found in the wrong place at the wrong time. I am certain she was not even aware she was committing any crime. In any case, she was as much at risk as anyone the police intended to protect. Guta has proved he is the risk.

Maybe instead of trying Guta for his recent case or the other, the State ought to prosecute whichever public official allowed him out for so long that he was tempted to commit another crime. Come to think of it, had the prosecution authorities acted with expedience, maybe the businessperson in Chikwawa would have been robbed. And the State would not have had to set aside extra funds to try for his Chikwawa crime.