Remandee turns into lion, leopard, snake, monkey


by Gedion Munthali, 23 March 2006 - 07:44:58

Chichiri Prison authorities Wednesday expelled a mystifying theft suspect who on Tuesday night turned into four forms of wild animals—a leopard, a lion, a monkey and a snake in that order—and attacked fellow remandees in his holding cell.
Prisons spokesperson Tobias Nowa said authorities at the prison asked the Police to take Alfred Divasoni away after other inmates reported their overnight ordeal, some of them showing the scratches they incurred.
“It is true that the puzzling development has taken place at Chichiri Prison,” said Nowa at around 1300GMT, laughing. “This afternoon authorities at the prison asked the police to come and collect their suspect. I am told [the police] have just taken him away.”
“He had to be sent away because we have a duty to protect other inmates,” Nowa added.
He said the suspect was brought to the prison Tuesday evening after police in Bvumbwe arrested him for allegedly stealing Macadamia nuts.
“They brought him to the prison to be kept on remand pending further investigations and trial. But in the morning other remandees in his cell complained that once he entered it he turned into a leopard, a lion, a monkey and a snake,” said Nowa.
“Some inmates suffered some bruises when he scratched them especially after turning into a leopard, while others suffered the injuries after ramming against the wall in the commotion that ensued from the mystery,” said Nowa.
Police spokesman Willie Mwaluka could not be reached to say where the Police had taken Divason.
Meanwhile, a medical doctor at John Hopkins Hospital in Blantyre Thomas Ndovi has not spent the past three nights at his flat in Mandala and is living in fear because a figure in the form of a woman, appearing like it is carrying a baby, keeps on resurfacing at his home, putting on a duvet it snatched from him Sunday night.
Sometimes it is only the duvet which is re-emerging in different places around the premises right behind Mudi House.
Ndovi—who lives alone at the flat—confirmed his ordeal Wednesday afternoon.
“Sunday night I was fast asleep under a duvet. At around 1 am I felt someone pulling away the duvet. When I woke up I saw a figure looking like a woman and appearing to be carrying a baby holding the duvet. I remember to have asked it three questions and it responded to two. But I do not remember what I asked exactly, and the answers given,” said Ndovi.
The beleaguered doctor said he ran away from the flat the same night to his sister’s place in Chinyonga.
“The following morning, I found the duvet only. But it was outside. At noon, the duvet was nowhere to be seen. In the evening I found something lying in my bed putting on the duvet,” said Ndovi.
“The routine repeated [itself] yesterday,” he added.
“Today the duvet was not there in the morning. But I found it at lunch hour. I am now in the company of friends and relations trying to figure out what is going on and what we should do,” he said.