(MENAFN- The Post)
MASERU – A WITNESS in the Mokalekale Khetheng murder case this week stunned the court when he accused a senior lawyer of forgery.
Police Constable Tumelo Ntoane implied that Advocate Motiea Teele KC could have forged his signature so that it appeared as if he had deposed to an affidavit he knew nothing about.
The crown witness said he did not sign the affidavit Advocate Teele presented in court despite that the signature resembled the one in another document.
Advocate Teele produced the affidavit in court as a reference while cross-examining PC Ntoane but the latter said he knew nothing about it.
“I never went to Teele Chambers nor met him to sign any habeas corpus affidavit,” PC Ntoane said.
He said that the only time he had signed an affidavit was when he was in Advocate Moshoeshoe's chambers.
When asked what could have transpired he said he did not know, however,
“anything is possible” he said.
Under cross-examination by Advocate Karabo Mohau KC, PC Ntoane said there were two applications in the Khetheng habeas corpus application and he recalled signing the affidavit for the first one but he never signed the second one.
He said he was surprised when he saw his signature in the affidavit which the crown claimed belonged to him.
However, Advocate Mohau said it could not be correct to say Advocate Teele fabricated his affidavit and forged his signature because the affidavits were signed before a commissioner of oaths.
“There was no way Teele could use or pretend that you have signed a document because there is a commissioner of oath,” he said.
However, PC Ntoane said a lawyer who handled the Khetheng habeas corpus application, Advocate Moshoeshoe, withdrew and Advocate Teele took over.
He said Advocate Teele used the affidavit which Advocate Moshoeshoe had commissioned.
Advocate Mohau put it to him that he used the same affidavit during the habeas corpus application and it was surprising that he was now rejecting it.
He reminded PC Ntoane that he accused one of the accused, Senior Superintendent Thabo Tšukulu, of threatening to kill him if he would not lie but this did not appear in his affidavit.
PC Ntoane however responded that he was protecting his job as Tšukulu instructed him to lie in the affidavit.
“The essence of the affidavit was to mislead the court by saying I had witnessed Khetheng leaving Hlotse Police Station alive,” he said.
However, Advocate Mohau put it to him that there was nowhere in the affidavit where he explained that he saw Khetheng leaving the station alive.
“This says what you said in that affidavit was said by the vision of your facts not by the facts you claim you were ordered to make,” he said.
He said what PC Ntoane said in the habeas corpus application in his affidavit is not what was in the bail application affidavit which he made when Tšukulu was applying for bail.
PC Ntoane was supporting the crown's decision to oppose bail.
'Malimpho Majoro
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