Sombre mood as court is shown ‘distressing’ images in Chanthunya girl friend murder trial

A case in which businessman Misonzi Chanthunya is accused of murdering his Zimbabwean girlfriend Linda Gasa in 2010started on Friday in a sombre mood as state investigators showed a video and pictures of the dead body of a lady found at Mwala Lodge in Mangochi.

The court was dead in silence with sombre faces as the prosecution showed the dead body of Linda Gasa.

Chanthunya was in the court when the pictures and video clip of his former girlfriend were shown.

The murder suspect sat motionless and his face expressionless.

In 2010, Chanthunya escaped to South Africa after being questioned by police in Blantyre following the discovery of Gasa’s body at his private cottage in Monkey Bay after  an exclusive story which was revealed by Nyasa Times.

He was arrested by International Police in January 2012 at the residence of a Malawian woman in Rustenburg, South Africa’s North Western Province, before being extradited to Malawi for trial last March.

The state is expected to finish parading its witnesses Friday.

Gasa, who was a second-year accountancy student at Malawi College of Accountancy, is said to have gone missing in August  2010.

Indications were that Chanthunya, who is married to South African citizen Prudence, was in a relationship with Gasa and they were expecting a child which Chanthunya allegedly did not want to take responsibility for. He thus resorted to killing her.

It is alleged that Chanthunya tried to dispose of Gasa’s body twice before burying her underneath the bathroom in his private cottage.

Malawi police said nine bags of cement were used to make the concrete to bury Gasa’s remains.

Chanthunya first attempted to bury Gasa in the nearby bush but a gravedigger hired to do the job struck a huge rock and could not proceed.