By PERPETUAL SICHIKWENKWE –
LUSAKA artiste Robert Chunga, aka ‘Bobby East’ and his partner Ruth Mukanga have been ordered to pay K8,500 each for producing a sex video with intent to corrupt people’s morals.
Senior resident magistrate Mwaka Mikalile ordered the ‘couple’ to pay the money immediately failure to which each one of them would serve nine months in prison.
Chunga and Mukanga, a human resource student at National Institute of Public Administration (NIPA), were charged with producing a video containing obscene material.
Chunga, 25, of house number 1551, Zumbo Crescent in Chunga Township in Lusaka and Mukanga, 21, of house number 398 A off Kafue Road in Makeni, in June 2014 in Lusaka, jointly and while acting together, produced a cinematography film on a cell phone tending to corrupt morals.
The video, which was produced using an Iphone, went viral online resulting in the duo’s arrest.
They defended themselves by telling the police that the video was for their own use and that the phone on which they had recorded it was stolen but investigations proved to the contrary.
Ms Mikalile said when she sentenced Chunga and Mukanga yesterday that the two had no justifiable excuse for producing the video.
There was need to mete out necessary punishment on the two to deter would-be offenders.
Ms Mikalile, however, exercised lenience on Chunga and Mukanga because they were first offenders and because they readily admitted the offence, which did not waste the court’s time.
She ordered them to pay K8,500 each forthwith or serve a nine-month jail term each in default.
Chunga and Mukanga paid the money and walked to freedom to the jubilation of their families who were heard chanting ‘free at last.’