By NATION REPORTER
A state witness has contradicted his own evidence in court that Sarovar Hotel does not have any evidence of any criminal conduct against Amos Chanda after having testified earlier that he had secured evidence against the accused in a matter the Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) is accusing Chanda of having stolen and destroyed a court record.
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This is a matter in which the DEC has alleged that between May 12, 2020, and October 1, 2022, Amos Chanda destroyed a court document, a charge Chanda has denied.
Mr Antony Mtonga on Wednesday told Lusaka Principal Resident Magistrate Irene Wishimanga that Chanda did not commit any offence at the hotel on September 30, 2022, or at any other times he had visited the hotel.
When the Magistrate visited Sarovar Hotel, in April, Mtonga explained that the footage that existed on the server was secure and incorruptible before it was auto-deleted 60 days afterwards.
And when he tendered the video footage before the court, Mtonga said there was nowhere in the footage where Chanda was seen committing an offence and that the same footage was delivered to him by the DEC.
Mtonga submitted that a copy of the same footage he submitted to the DEC was raw, not password-secured and therefore he could not tell if any modifications had been made to it.
Answering a question as to who had edited the Benz car from the footage and super-imposed it with a Toyota Mark X, Mtonga said he did not know.
Asked by defence counsel Timmy Munalula to confirm that his testimony was repeatedly that Mr Chanda arrived in a black Mercedes Benz, the state witness responded in the affirmative but submitted that the car in the footage he had shown the court was a Toyota Mark X.
“Witness, confirm that whatever you are telling this court is the truth, the whole truth,” asked another defence counsel Bervan Mengo to which the witness said he was telling the truth.
Confirm that what you saw in the footage that you recorded and presented before this court is a Benz,” lawyers asked to which the witness said yes.
Lawyers then asked the witness to play back the video footage and pause it where Mr Chanda was leaving the hotel. When he was asked to identify the car in the footage, the State witness and it was a Mark X and not a Benz.
“Who removed the Benz from the footage and introduced Mark X?”
“Your worship I do not know,” Mr Mtonga said.
Mr Mtonga also submitted that it was not true that there was a live band at Sarovar Hotel at the time Chanda had visited the hotel.
“There was no live band and we do not have a live band at all at the hotel.”
He also told the court that it was against hotel policy to record guests and give the footage to third parties as the hotel did in the case of Chanda.
Mr Mtonga also said he did not know what charge Chanda was facing before and that even if he was shown the indictment, he did not wish to know.
He told the court that Chanda did not carry any documents in his hands when arrived at the hotel and neither did he burn anything.
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