By GIDEON NYENDWA
THIRTEEN girls including mobile money agent Pamela Chisumpa were yesterday rescued by neighbours from a dungeon-like house in Lusaka’s Chalala area where they had been kept captive for several months after they were abducted by two hoodlums one of whom has been arrested.
The girls were rescued from the house whose inside exhibited signs of rituals after one of them escaped after scaling the perimeter fence and alerted the neighbours about the terrifying and scary house as the abductors fled the scene.
A coffin, fetishes, a shrine, condoms, sanitary pads and an assortment of voodoo staff were part of the life of the 13 girls for the days on end that they were kept captive.
One of the two kidnappers has been arrested while the other is said to have mysteriously disappeared.
Ms. Chisumpa, a mobile money agent was reported missing in April this year and all efforts to trace her proved futile until yesterday when she was rescued from the underworld house of horror.
Police had to be called in soon after the girls were discovered in a scene that depicted the scary movie dreadfully known as hammer house of horror.
According to the witnesses and neighbours around the area where the girls were found, at about 13 hours yesterday one of the girls mysteriously escaped from the house and ran to the neighbours, screaming while banging the gate.
The neighbours narrated that upon opening the gate, they met the girl who looked distressed and distraught and crying for help.
The neightbours narrated that they found the 13 girls and a man who was in a black robe but said the man mysterious vanished immediately the neighbours entered the house.
“They were coiling in one corner of the house and there were some men with one of them in a black robe. Immediately we entered the house, the men vanished,” one of the neighbours said.
The neighbours said they never suspected anything but they used to see men leave and enter the premises where the girls were found and mostly they were buying condoms and sanitary pads from the nearby shops.
Meanwhile, Inspector General of Police Lemmy Kajoba has confirmed the rescue of the 13 girls and described the episode as a sense of relief because the girls had been found.
Mr Kajoba named the 13 girls among them Pamela Chisumpa, Grace Siabeulu 17, female Juvenile aged 17, Grace Siabeula, 22, Felistus Hachintu,18, Ruth Banda, 21, Nalukui Macwani, 21, Agness Kapwaya, 21 and Dorcas Chungwe, 24.
Others were Priscila Mapulanga, 23, Honester Lungu, 25, Rosemary Chibwe 25, Faith Muluti, 28 and Paxina Chanda, 22.
