Former Brigade student faces infanticide charge

ITUMELENG TSHENYEGO
Correspondent | Thursday June 20, 2013 00:00

FRANCISTOWN: A forensic pathologist has testified that a baby whose mother claimed was born dead was suffocated to death with plastics. Doctor Kaelo Manzira Mabaka explained before Justice Barnabas Nyamadzabo of the High Court that the baby was born alive and that it died due to suffocation.

'I performed a hydrostatic test which involves putting lungs in water. The lungs of the baby floated in water that indicates that it had some exchange of air.

The hydrostatic test is up to 98 percent accurate,' he said. The doctor was testifying in a case where Malebogo John faces a charge of infanticide following a pregnancy during her student days at Zwenshambe Brigade in 2009. Her lawyer, Goitse Simon asked the doctor whether the hydrostatic test was to be trusted or was it based on estimation.

Mabaka responded that the test is 98 percent accurate and the results cannot be disputed. In her testimony, John said that she delivered the baby in a toilet and realised that it was not breathing or moving. 'I was too scared to tell anyone so I wrapped the baby in a towel because it was not breathing. I wanted to talk to a female but no one was available,' she said.

However, Mabaka said movement is not an accurate way of telling whether a person is alive or not. He said there was an attempt to breath on the baby's part after the delivery took place, hence the baby died due to suffocation by the plastic bags.

The 24-year old John is said to have repeatedly denied the pregnancy when one of her instructors at Zwenshambe Brigade, Oneetse Mminapofu constantly asked her about signs that indicated that she had conceived. The instructor said in court that she was surprised one day when John asked her for permission to go for a check-up.

'I was puzzled as to why she wanted to go for a check-up because she had never said she was sick. It was then that she revealed that she was pregnant after she had denied it for so long,' she said. John is said to have come back later, claiming she had a miscarriage and that the clinic that she was admitted to cremated the baby. Mminapofu said she then asked her to go to the clinic to get a fitness certificate because she could not come back to attend lessons after a miscarriage.

Upon inquiry by one Senzinhle Baswane from Masunga Primary Hospital, who was the nurse attending John at the time, it was discovered that she had delivered the baby on her own and that the claim of cremation was false.Baswane told the court that she referred the accused to a doctor who was on call at the hospital. The doctor who has since relocated to South Africa after his contract expired last year, is said to be the one who led the police to the body of the decomposed baby.

'The accused told the doctor that the baby was in a car parked outside. Upon our arrival, the car was opened and there was a bag inside. The police discovered a baby inside a bag and it (the baby) was wrapped in layers upon layers of plastic bags. The smell was horrible, I could not bear it,' she said. The trial continues today.