By KASONDE KASONDE –

A TWENTY-TWO-YEAR-OLD woman of Kapiri Mposhi has been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for strangling her newly born baby and dumping it in a pit latrine.
Kabwe High Court judge-in-charge Mwiindi Siavwapa sentenced Salome Nakawala to 18 months in prison after she admitted to killing her child.
Nakawala was charged with trying to conceal death.
She endeavoured to conceal the birth of a child she had delivered, by secretly disposing of the body in Soweto Township in Kapiri on May 29, last year.
Nakawala who was nine months pregnant, delivered a child around 21:00 hours and afterwards put it in a plastic bag and dumped it in the neighbour’s  pit latrine.
The following day Nakawala complained to her aunt about experiencing abdominal pains but the aunt asked  whether she had delivered after noticing blood stains on the clothes she wore previously.
She was later taken to Tazara Clinic where a medical doctor examined her and established that indeed Nakawala had delivered and later a report was taken to TAZARA Police Station where she revealed that she had delivered a baby boy and threw it in a pit latrine.
The body of the baby was later retrieved and postmortem examinations showed that the cause of death was strangulation.
In passing judgment, Mr Justice Siavwapa said it was unfortunate that after keeping the pregnancy till its maturity, Nakawala decided to use barbaric means to killing her baby.