VICTORIA KASANGA writes
@SunZambian
A 20-YEAR-OLD lady has been fined K4, 000 for falsely accusing a man of being responsible for her pregnancy.
In this case, Daniel Kalabwa a 23-year-old resident of new Masala Township sued Ruth Musukwa of the same township for defamation of character.
He told the court that he was dating Ms Musukwa since 2015 when she was in grade 10.
Mr Kalabwa said last year Ruth told him that she was pregnant and that he was the one responsible for her pregnancy.
“I told my parents about the situation and we arranged some money and paid chisumina Mulandu(admission of guilt) ,” he said.
He said when she went for a scan, she was told she was carrying twins.
Mr Kalabwa said he used to take care of Ruth throughout her pregnancy and prepared clothes for the babies.
He said in January this year, Ruth sent him a text message, informing him that he was not responsible for her pregnancy and that she did not want him to be disturbing her.
Mr Kalabwa said he did not want to believe the message and simply ignored everything, concluding that women would say anything when they were pregnant.
The case was before Kabushi Local Court senior presiding magistrate Agnes Mulenga.
“A month later she stopped picking my calls and started posting pictures of a man named Gift saying he was the father of her children,” he said.
He said he told his family members who questioned Ruth’s mother about pictures on social media.
Mr Kalabwa said after a few days, Ruth and her family went to his place with money apologising that their child had lied and that he was responsible for her pregnancy.
He said he decided to take her to court because she had destroyed his name and wasted his time as people in their area knew that he was responsible for her pregnancy and yet he was not.
In her statement, Ruth said she dated Mr Kalabwa since 2015 and that she had another man she was seeing at the same time.
She said when she became pregnant, she told Mr Kalabwa that he was not the one responsible but since we were sleeping together since January 2019, he insisted that it was his pregnancy.
“Whenever I tried telling him that he was not responsible for my pregnancy, he used to get upset and threatened to kill me so I decided to keep quiet,” she said.
Ruth said when he went to her place with his family members, they did not give her chance to speak and that was how Mr Kalabwa paid the money.
In passing judgment, the court ordered Ruth to compensate Mr Kalabwa with K4,000 for defaming his character and wasting his time with the first instalment of K500 and thereafter K200 monthly.
