The ManicaPost
Abel Zhakata Senior Reporter
THERE was commotion at Mutare Magistrates’ Courts on Monday this week when hundreds of people thronged the place to see a giant python, which was brought for it to filed as an exhibit by detectives and officials from the Parks and Wildlife Department.
After it was recorded as an exhibit, the reptile was taken back to Mutare Museum for safekeeping since the Clerk of Court does not have facilities to keep it.
Two Mutare women who are facing charges of possessing a specified animal following last week’s drama, in which the six-metre-long python was found in a room at a lodge in the city, have approached the High Court seeking freedom after the magistrate turned down their bail applications.
The owner of Green Gate Lodge, Loice Samhere, and a commercial sex worker, Queen Mpofu, were sent to remand prison after Miss Notebular Muchineripi dismissed their bail applications and set December 20 as the trial date.
They are being charged for contravening Section 45 as read with Section 128 of the Parks and Wildlife Act which prohibits the hunting, keeping or possession of specified animals.
If found guilty, they face a mandatory nine-year jail sentence unless there are special circumstances. Defence counsel Mr Chris Ndlovu revealed yesterday that they had since filed bail applications at the High Court in Harare.
“We have filed the bail applications at the High Court in Harare and we will inform you as soon as we get the outcome,” he said.
Initially, detectives arrested Mpofu over the case but Samhere was later picked up and subsequently apprehended over the same issue after Mpofu confessed to the cops that she was the owner of the snake. Mpofu is alleged to have told the cops that she was only keeping the snake on behalf of Samhere.
