‘Fake doctor’ Kaonga walks to freedom
By Esther Chisola
A LUSAKA man escaped jail by the skin of his tooth when court acquitted him because of the sloppy investigation of his alleged offence by the police.
Mavbuto Kaonga, 38, walked to freedom after the court cleared him of the charge of impersonating a medical doctor at Kanyama Level One Hospital.
Kaonga had denied the charge had been put on trial.
The allegation was that Kaonga, between July 15, 2024, and August 28, 2024, in Lusaka, falsely represented himself to Robert Kangwa, a nurse-in-charge at Kanyama Level 1 Hospital as a medical doctor in the Ministry of Health deployed at the facility.
Delivering judgment, magistrate Chrispin Hampungani acquitted Kaong because the State had failed to prove how he had impersonated a Dr Kaunda who was not even part of the medical personnel at the hospital.
“I find that the prosecution had not shown me any intent to deprive or any person who was attended to by the accused. There was no Doctor Kaunda who was impersonated at Level One General Hospital. I therefore acquit the accused and set him free,” Hapungani said.
Earlier, the court heard how Kaonga was twice found in the hospital’s screening room and when asked who he was, he introduced himself as a Dr Kaunda.
He claimed he had trained in China and was working from Nakonde and was at the Kanyama hospital on a transfer.
Kaonga did not produce any evidence to show that indeed he was a medical doctor.
However, of the witnesses called by the State none had confirmed that the hospital had a Dr Kaunda who was impersonated.
The court ruled that if anyone who addressed themselves as a doctor should be arrested, prosecuted and sentenced, then a lot of people in society would be filling up the prisons in the country.
“The accused told the witness that he was the doctor and no one produced anywhere where he signed that he was Dr Kaunda. No evidence was adduced to the effect that he was a doctor. If calling himself a doctor can result in him being jailed, then prisons will be full of school drop-outs who call themselves doctors, lawyers,” Hapungani said.
He wondered why the whole Kanyama Level 1 Hospital could have one screening room which could allow strangers to just walk in and claim to be doctors.
