A FORMER senior police officer and his wife appeared in court yesterday after a two-month-old baby girl was allegedly kidnapped in Southview suburb in Gweru on Friday.
Mekia Tanyanyiwa, who headed the ZRP Support Unit, and his wife, Sakhile Tshuma (34) appeared before Gweru provincial magistrate Ms Beauty Dube facing kidnapping charges.
Tanyanyiwa had his charges withdrawn before his plea after the court established that it was Sakhile who had kidnapped the baby.
The baby has since been found and reunited with its mother Ms Loreen Hungwe (31) of Woodlands Park in Gweru. The court also heard that it was Mekia who drove the baby back to Gweru from Norton immediately after Tshuma had brought the baby home and lied to him that she was the mother of the baby.
Tshuma was convicted on her own plea of guilty and remanded in custody to today for sentencing.
Tanyanyiwa was allegedly arrested after it was established that he owned the Toyota Aqua used in the kidnapping.
It is the State case that on March 8 at around 11am, Hungwe took her baby to Gweru Provincial Hospital, where she intended to collect her child’s birth record.
Soon after collecting the birth record, the complainant was spotted by Tshuma while coming out of the hospital, and she offered her a lift to the city centre.
Tshuma was driving a white Toyota Aqua registration number AFW6208 and was in the company of two female passengers who are still at large.
The court heard that as they were driving to the city centre, Tshuma told Ms Hungwe that she wanted to pass through Southview suburb,where she wanted to drop off one of the unidentified women who was in the car. Upon arrival at the house in Southview, Tshuma asked Ms Hungwe to assist the woman to disembark from the vehicle under the guise that she was not well.
Ms Hungwe then left her daughter in the vehicle as she went to assist the woman, Tshuma immediately sped off towards the Gweru-Bulawayo Road with the baby, the complainant’s baby clothes and birth record.
Ms Hungwe screamed for help and the members of the public managed to capture the registration number of Tshuma’s car. A report was made to the police leading to Tshuma’s arrest and subsequent recovery of the stolen baby, her clothes and birth record.
