Deaf, dumb, blind man rapes 5-year-old niece

court

In a mind-boggling incident, a deaf, dumb and visual impaired man from Iminyela suburb in Bulawayo has appeared in court facing charges of raping his five-year-old niece

The 38-year-old disabled man was not asked to plead when he briefly appeared before Western Commonage magistrate, Mr Shepherd Munjanja on Tuesday last week for contravening section 65 of the Criminal Law and (Codification and Reform) Act Chapter 9:23, Rape.

The prosecutor, Mr Jabulani Mhlanga, told the court that on 21 March this year at around 11am the young girl was in the house alone while her mother was outside.

The accused allegedly went into the house and forcibly removed the girl’s clothes and had sexual intercourse with her once. The complaint’s mother discovered the horrific incident when she entered the house and caught the accused red-handed raping her daughter.

The mother then took a shoe and hit the man on his back forcing him to stop. The court heard that she then teamed up with other relatives and neighbours and effected citizen arrest and reported the matter to Western Commonage Police Station leading to his arrest.

Initially the accused had been remanded in custody to last Friday and was told by the magistrate to apply for bail at the High Court but when he reappeared in the court on that date he was remanded out of custody at the insistence of the State to 9 April.

This follows reports that some other prison inmates were taking away his food since he was deaf, dumb and visually impaired. It was also reported that there were no proper conditions at the remand prison to cater for people with such disabilities hence the state decided to remand the man out of custody.