If you are the government official interceding with the Bangladeshi government on behalf of Lesedi Molapisi, you would be hoping and praying that those on the other side of the table don’t know the contents of the Report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Review of the Constitution of Botswana – especially its Recommendation 91.
Molapisi is the 30-year old Motswana woman currently awaiting trial in a Bangladesh prison. Upon entering the terminal at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on January 23 this year, she went to the green channel, being the passage that arriving passengers with no goods to declare use. She had flown from the Oliver Tambo International Airport on a Qatar Airways flight via Doha. On being searched, police found over 3.146kg of heroin concealed in her luggage and immediately arrested her.
Almost a year ago (January 26, 2022), Bangladeshi police arrested a Bangladeshi man, Mohibul Islam Masud, who is the Managing Director of a Dhaka-based company called Mehrab Industries Limited. Six days later, the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into the Review of the Constitution of Botswana, which was chaired by former Chief Justice Maruping Dibotelo, held its first public hearings at the Gabane kgotla (public square). As Molapisi sat in a Dhaka jail, investigations that would certainly have included long hours of interrogation, continued apace. Resultantly, a new subject of interest entered the picture: a male friend of Molapisi’s called Evans Chukaka.
As quoted in Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper, the charge sheet states the following: “Molapisi took three handbags from her friend Evans Chukaka, a resident of Johannesburg in South Africa, before coming to Bangladesh; the heroin was hidden inside the bags.”
Chukaka, if that is even a genuine name, would probably be the Nigerian man who has been associated with Molapisi. There is a theory that this man used or had been using Molapisi as a mule.
A Botswana passport carries both promise and peril. The promise is that you will whizz through checkpoints at international airports with virtually no hassle because Batswana are generally considered law-abiding by the international community. The peril is that such reputation makes Batswana (especially women) targets of international criminals who entice them to move certain “goods” between borders. According to said theory, the Nigerian man ensnared Molapisi into a “romantic” relationship that actually was all about illegal business.
Online, some of Molapisi’s “friends” have detailed sudden change in her lifestyle around the time that she met this man. One of her most widely circulated tweets, which she wrote a day before her arrest, reads: “Catch flights not feelings.” Someone claiming to be acquainted with her says online that, when Molapisi started globe-trotting and making frequent trips to Johannesburg, she jokingly asked her if she had a Nigerian boyfriend – something the subject reportedly laughed off.
Chukaka could well be the man who celebrated his birthday last month – that is if the information he gave Molapisi is accurate at all.
Exactly 61 days before her ill-fated landing at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Molapisi tweeted a birthday message to someone she believed then to be an “adorable friend” of hers. The message reads in full: “A Blessed birthday to this adorable friend of mine @Odee65051218. As we celebrate his birthday, may I also use this opportunity to give a shoutout and ask you my tweeps to follow him for a follow. He will most definitely follow you back.” She enclosed a picture of a light-skinned man in his 30s wearing a tracksuit and designer shades and clutching an iPhone in one hand. The man looks a picture of health and wealth and the wall in the background suggests the picture was taken at an exclusive residential address – possibly Sandton. The latter is a Johannesburg area and is reputed to be “Africa’s richest square mile.”
At this time, the Dibotelo Commission had only just been appointed. When it started its work in earnest, one of the issues that members of the public expressed grave concern about was growing drug and substance abuse in Botswana. In private conversation, some people, who include health professionals and police officers, have attributed this problem to a decision by former President Ian Khama to severely restrict the sale of alcohol. Drug abuse has particularly wreaked havoc in Gaborone’s exclusive residential addresses.
On July 28, 2022 the Dibotelo Commission conducted its last round of public hearings, taking submissions from the Botswana Christian Council and civil society organisations. The following month (August 17), Bangladeshi police wrapped up their investigations and concluded that Molapisi and Masud were, according to Daily Star, “active members of an international drug-smuggling syndicate.” The language is lifted from a charge sheet that Sub-Inspector Mohammad Jahamgir Alam, an investigation officer at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport Police Station has filed before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court in Dhaka.
Following Molapisi’s arrest, her adorable friend deactivated his Twitter account and there is an either true-or-false account that shortly thereafter, he got married.
A case of this nature would have involved the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), the world’s largest international police organization with 195-member states, among them Botswana, Bangladesh and South Africa. This necessarily means that during the course of their eight-month investigation, Bangladesh police would have contacted their South African counterparts. They found no evidence incriminating Chukaka and resultantly, Interpol protocols for extraditing criminal suspects were never activated.
“No definite evidence against Chukaka or his address was found during investigation, so he was not named in the charge sheet,” reads the charge sheet.
Having covered a total of 132 places and listened to oral submissions from 3440 speakers at the kgotla and after travelling 27 686 km by road and 30 hours by air, the Commission finally produced a report. The report notes concerns over drug and substance abuse.
“Views were that the law is lenient on well-known drug lords and users. Some highlighted that street stalls were being used as distribution points. In addition, only alcohol content is tested at road blocks, but not other habit-forming drugs. Proposals were that control measures should be put in place and penalties related to drug crimes should be strengthened and that tests for habit-forming drugs be introduced at road blocks or check points. The use of sniffer dogs was also proposed as the most effective way of detecting drugs,” the report says.
Its Recommendation 91 reads as follows: “The Commission recommends that the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Drugs Act should be amended to include a provision prescribing the death penalty for drug lords and drug traffickers.”
As would be expected and as is international practice, the Botswana government is pleading with Bangladesh’s for clemency for Molapisi. However, Recommendation 91 makes this task even more difficult because a commission of enquiry chaired by a former Chief Justice wants the government to do to drug traffickers what Bangladesh is already doing to them – kill them.
Botswana has a quite sizeable Bangladeshi community and it is likely that what the report says would have been relayed back home when the Molapisi issue is discussed. There is also possibility that the Botswana government might adopt and codify Recommendation 91 into law as Molapisi’s case crawls through the Bangladeshi court system. If that happens, you could well hear a Bangladeshi diplomat telling a Botswana emissary visiting Dhaka to intercede on Molapisi’s behalf: “But your own country just amended its laws to punish drug traffickers with death.”
