By DELPHINE ZULU –

A GRADE Nine female pupil has appeared in the Lusaka magistrate court and pleaded not guilty to burglary and theft of K25,000.
When the matter came up for plea yesterday before principal resident magistrate Kenneth Mulife, the girl from Vera Chiluba school in Lusaka’s Mtendere Township denied stealing K25,000 cash, a Plasma television set and a Sumsung mobile phone.
This is in a case in which the girl aged 16 from the same area, took plea in the presence of her aunt, clad in a school uniform and amid sobs.
It is alleged that they broke Alick Banda’s house with other unknown people and stole the items.
The matter has since been adjourned to June 8, this year for trial.
In the same court, Mr Mulife has ordered the prisons authority at Kamwala Remand Prison to appear before him today and explain the circumstances in which they allowed an accused person to leave the premises without police escort.
This came to light yesterday when State Prosecutor Zacks Yuma told the court that the suspect, Shadreck Mwanza, facing charges of obtaining money by false pretences and bouncing of cheques, was seen coming out of his lawyer’s car without any escort.
“As the State, our concern is the porous security at Kamwala Remand Prison, we want to know under what circumstances was the lawyer allowed to take the detained suspect without police escort, they came the two of them in a private vehicle, we are worried,” Mr Yuma said.
He informed the court that Mwanza was actually not scheduled to appear in court yesterday, as the warrant was clearly showing today and urged the court to probe the matter further.
But the defence lawyer told the court that when he went to show his client the application for bail, he was informed that the vehicle taking prisoners to court had broken down and when he asked for escort, he was told there was no one to accompany them.
Magistrate Mulife in his ruling ordered the prison personnel on duty to appear before him today to explain how a suspect left the remand prison unaccompanied.