Home Affairs and Internal Security Minister Jack Mwiimbu has insisted that the only illness known to the government for which Emmanuel JJ Banda, the Petauke Central independent member of Parliament was being treated is a long-standing hernia issue.
Mwiimbu disclosed that Banda has suffered from hernia for many years and has been using traditional medicine to treat it to the extent that his traditional ruler, Chief Mumbi, requested Mwiimbu to allow Banda access to his traditional treatments while in custody for a non-bailable aggravated robbery charge in Chipata.
The minister explained that Banda, detained in Chipata for weeks now awaiting the commencement of his trial in the High Court, was taken to Chipata General Hospital on August 1 for medical attention.
“Emmanuel Banda has a history of suffering from hernia. As a result of hernia complications, he was taken to hospital and was attended to by medical doctors. A minor operation was conducted to cure or remove or make amends pertaining [sic] to his hernia. While in the hospital, he was advised by medical staff that he had to go on salt therapy wherein in the morning and evening, the family had to put water in a bucket or tub and he’d sit in the tub in order to heal or assist in the healing process.”
It was under the pretext of administering this salt therapy that Banda engineered his escape from the hospital and lawful custody four days later.
According to Mwiimbu, around 21:00h on August 4, one of Banda’s three wives, Lombe Chali Banda, aged 31 years, requested the five officers on Banda’s guard duty to give the husband some privacy for him to submerse himself in salt water per the doctors’ instructions and to use the bathroom.
The two police officers and three Zambia Correctional Service officers acquiesced to the wife’s request and left the room. That was the last they saw of Banda because when the wife called them back into the room, her husband had vanished.
“Unfortunately, when the officers went back to the room where he was left with the wife, he was not in the room. Preliminary investigations done by the officers guarding him show that he went out of the room through the window. He escaped from lawful custody using the window of the hospital. How he did it is a matter still under investigation. The ZP and other security wings have launched a manhunt for the fugitive JJ Banda,” Mwiimbu narrated.
The five officers have since been detained as investigations continue.
Asked whether the wife is being treated as an accomplice to the escape, Mwiimbu said he could not definitively answer that as it was being investigated.
