Police Chief Superintendent Joseph Chani, in the dock for allegedly murdering a suspected illegal diamond panner in Chiadzwa last year, yesterday threatened to drag all police officers who testified against him to a disciplinary hearing for flouting the force procedures by playing the “blame game”.
Chani also stunned the court after disclosing that there was a conspiracy within the police force to nail him. He took a swipe at his counterpart Chief Superintendent Dorcas Nyadenga and the junior police officers for testifying against him, suggesting some of the evidence against him was “cooked”.
He said that Nyadenga flouted the indications procedures arguing she was too junior to be involved in “this high-level case” where conspiracy was at play.
The top cop said he would drag all the junior officers, including Assistant Inspector Edson Mandizvidza, to the disciplinary hearing while labelling one of them, Constable Knowledge Bhobho, as blind because “he failed to see what was visible and concentrated on information” that nailed him.
Commenting on the pictures produced by the court on Wednesday that showed the deceased’s swollen body, Chani left the court in stitches when he said the doctor made a post-mortem on the wrong person to cook the evidence. He said police gave the doctor instructions to observe a wrong person and concluded that the deceased died of assault yet in real fact it was the body of another person.
Chani was giving oral evidence in court when he suggested: “There is conspiracy in its totality. There is conspiracy in the police force against me because the matter was reported as sudden death and later changed to murder ‘nicodemously’. They had their meetings at night to conspire against me.
“I did not assault anyone. It was foolhardy for a commander like me to assault a suspect in front of junior officers. I couldn’t do such a thing and waste time on that yet there were many panners prejudicing the State in Chiadzwa.”
Chani said: “Security men wanted to loot diamonds along with the panners, but I blocked that. That was the beginning of the conspiracy. The police officers who testified against me are ‘birds of the same feather’ with those panners because they work as ‘syndicates’ that’s why everyone spoke against me.”
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The matter will proceed next Tuesday after the defence applied for a postponement to call another police officer as its witness.
