The Court of Appeal July session is scheduled to start sitting this week, on the 4 of July.
Amongst the cases to be heard during the session is a civil case brought by DR Kiran Bhagat, who was early this year ordered to stop practicing medicine in the country by the Botswana Health Professionals Council (BHPC).
The BHPC had gone to court and Lobatse High Court judge, Michael Leburu, passed the judgment which, amongst other things, found that Bhagat’s certificates were not in order.
Some of Bhagat’s grounds for appeal are that the judge had erred in finding that Bhagat lacked the right to bring the matter before the Court as he (Bhagat) had a direct and substantial interest in the subject matter.
He also submits that Judge Leburu had erred in finding that the matter had been brought to Court in terms of the BHPC Act when he ought to have found that it was brought as a common law review against the decision of BHPC made in its purported discharge of its duties.
Bhagat contends that in finding, as he did, that Bhagat had been registered in terms of BHPC Act, the judge erred in finding that such registration was not lawful or valid and had no legal force and effect.
Bhagat contends that, alternatively, the judge erred in law and fact by failing to find that the BHPC had failed in its obligation in terms of law to ensure that all the necessary steps were taken to perfect the registration of Bhagat to practice medicine in Botswana.
Other cases to be heard by the Court Of Appeal in the July session include, amongst others, a case in which the Botswana Quarries is appealing against the decision of Lobatse High Court judge Key Oagile Dingake who dismissed an application they had brought, seeking an interdiction against Mokolodi residents for refusing the company access a route through their village.
Another petition will be one in which some lawyers are appealing against a High Court judgment, which dismissed their application that it was wrong for the Law Society of Botswana to have published their companies’ names in the media on allegations that they had failed to comply with the society’s regulations.
Criminal appeals include three death-sentence appeals in which one of them, Benson Keganne, is appealing against a death sentence passed on him for having murdered Gloria Mahowe.
His appeal was postponed to this season during the last session after lawyers who are handling the case stated that they had just received the file after another attorney, Joar Salbany, told the Court that he was no longer able to handle the case since he was relocating from Botswana.
Two other death row inmates, Raymond Kago Leshomo and Arnold Masango’s appeal is also scheduled to be heard in the session.
They were found guilty and sentenced to death for the murder of Mario Lottering at Mupane Gold Mine in 2009.
Still yet another death row inmate, Zibane Thamo, who was sentenced to death for the murder of his girlfriend Sihle Dube, is also having his case heard during the same session.
There will also be several appeals for murder and rape.
