GANG RAPISTS JAIL SENTENCE UPHELD
FRANCISTOWN: Two rapists who were each sentenced to 15 years in jail and two strokes failed in their bid to convince the court to reverse their sentences.
The appellants, Keamogetse Sekwata and Nicholas Kombe, were found guilty of raping their victim on January 3, 2014 at Gweta village in the North West Administrative District of Botswana.
The appellants’ joint grounds in their appeal are that they were not afforded a fair hearing, the trial magistrate fell into error by disregarding their defence and believing that of the State and the trial court failed to consider that none of the prosecution witnesses took oath rendering the proceedings a nullity amongst other reasons. In her testimony, the complainant who is also a resident of Gweta, indicated that she knew the applicants and mentioned the specific ward where they resided.
“She mentioned that on the date of the incident, she was on her way to a place of entertainment when she suddenly got accosted by the applicants who falsely accused her of insulting their mothers before assaulting and dragging her to an isolated place where they forcibly undressed her and repeatedly raped her one after the other,” Justice Tshegofatso Mogomotsi said.
The complainant, Mogomotsi explained, was later in the night forcibly and under threat of injury taken to a desolate yard at some lands where the appellants locked her inside a hut and repeatedly raped her until the early hours of the morning. “She indicated that at first light and after her ordeal, she heard the appellants discussing amongst themselves that they had a knife with which to kill her and destroy the evidence. She indicated that it was whilst they were in the middle of their discussion that she seized the opportunity to escape from the hut. She said as she ran through some field, she saw some yard where she met the second and third prosecution witnesses to whom she narrated her ordeal at the hands of the appellants,” the judge stated. Amongst other reasons for dismissing the appeal, Mogomotsi said the appellants failed to explain how failure to address them on the cautionary rule at the commencement of the proceedings occasioned any injustice to them and how the trial court had it so acted would have reached a verdict different from the one it reached. “I find in the premise the appellants argument on this ground a none issue and it is accordingly dismissed as such. Lastly, the appellants argued that the trial court erred by accepting the evidence of the fourth prosecution witness who was not the author of the medical report tendered into evidence,” she said.
“I find this ground to be an afterthought. The appellants were aware at all material times even before commencement of trial that the State would call the fourth prosecution witness who had not authored the medical report and never expressed any reservations objecting to the calling of the fourth prosecution witness let alone the medical report produced. The appeal is in this premise dismissed.”