A 20-year-old Bulawayo woman was last week hospitalised at Mpilo Central Hospital after sustaining broken arms and legs while being assaulted by Nkulumane police for allegedly trying to escape from the cells, CITE has learnt.
The accused woman has been identified as Lynette Langa.
Narrating the ordeal to CITE, her mother, Gcinani Donga said her daughter was arrested on Christmas day for allegedly stealing her boyfriend’s phone following an altercation between the two.
“So while she was in Nkulumane police station cells, she tried to escape through the ceiling which had been opened by another arrested person who escaped through it sometime,” said Donga.
“The police looked for her and found her in the ceiling and threw her to the floor. When I went to the station to see her, they told me she had escaped and they did not know how.”
Donga said the police then told her they had removed Langa who looked asthmatic from the cells and put her in a corridor from which they said she disappeared.
“I only saw my daughter on Tuesday morning when I was opening the gate,” Donga told CITE.
She said her daughter told her that the three police officers took her to a dark cell and beat her from there using a plank until she became unconscious.
“She says she only saw herself in the bush the following morning not aware of what transpired, because even if I ask her the falling incidents narrated to me by the police officer, she doesn’t remember at all”
“She was smelling bad and I got shocked and disturbed. I went to Nkulumane Police Station to inform the police since they had said I should alert them when she gets home. The first group of officers that came to see her, went back to the station and told me they were scared to take her back.”
Donga went on to say the second group also said the issue was beyond them while the third group called an ambulance to take her to the hospital.
“When the ambulance came, the police had left, so I decided to just take my daughter to Mpilo Hospital and when I got there nurses refused to attend to her without the police report, so I went to Mzilikazi Police Station to get one,” she said.
“The police only showed up at Mpilo Hospital at around 1pm and handcuffed her while she uncontrollably wailed in pain until the nurse who was attending to her complained. That was when they stopped whatever they were doing and started talking to us.”
Donga said her daughter was Thursday discharged from hospital and taken back to police cells.
Contacted for a comment, Bulawayo provincial police spokesperson Inspector Ncube said he had not yet received that report.
