{"id":73926,"date":"2019-02-01T06:43:57","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T04:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=73926"},"modified":"2019-02-01T06:43:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T04:43:57","slug":"misonzi-chanthunya-out-on-bail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/02\/01\/misonzi-chanthunya-out-on-bail\/","title":{"rendered":"Misonzi Chanthunya out on bail"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Pilirani Kachinziri:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Court of Appeal on Monday granted bail to Misonzi Chanthunya who is accused of murdering and burying under concrete slab his ex-Zimbabwean girlfriend, Linda Gasa, in Mangochi District in 2010.<\/p>\n<p>Chanthunya fled the country and was arrested in South Africa by South African police on January 24 2012. He was handed over to Malawi on March 1 2018.<\/p>\n<p>The murder suspect had been fighting his extradition in South African courts since his arrest but withdrew his objection and agreed to be extradited to Malawi.<\/p>\n<p>Chanthunya has been on remand in Malawi after the High Court denied him bail because he was a flight risk.<\/p>\n<p>In his ruling, Supreme Court Judge Justice Dunstan Mwaungulu said, if the custodial time limit is exceeded, the court must release the prisoner with or without bail.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cThe purpose was to limit the time in which a person can be held in custody before proceedings can be commenced,\u201d<\/em> the ruling states.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Justice Mwaungulu released Chanthunya on a bond of K500,000 non-cash from five sureties for the same amount. The court\u2019s registrar will examine the sureties.<\/p>\n<p>Chanthunya will surrender to the State all travel documents, apart from appearing at Blantyre Police Station every Monday and Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The court also asked Chanthunya to designate one area of residence.<\/p>\n<p>Chanthunya\u2019s lawyer, Chrispin Ngunde, welcomed the ruling, saying it was what he expected.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cI am obviously happy that something we have been looking for has been granted by the court,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ngunde said this was an application for bail pending an appeal.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>\u201cSo, the main reason he was granted bail is that the law allows a particular time limit the State can hold someone before they can commence trial and that period has expired,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Gasa was a student at Malawi College of Accountancy, Blantyre Campus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Pilirani Kachinziri: The Supreme Court of Appeal on Monday granted bail to Misonzi Chanthunya who is accused of murdering and burying under concrete slab his ex-Zimbabwean girlfriend, Linda Gasa, in Mangochi District in 2010. Chanthunya fled the country and was arrested in South Africa by South African police on January 24 2012. He was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":73933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73934,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73926\/revisions\/73934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}