Norman Kaviza
Peter Matika, Senior Life Reporter
CLOUD Nine Emirates restaurant and pub, director and major shareholder Uathalil Sasi Samanhraj, last Thursday presented a dossier of receipts and WhatsApp messages in court, as evidence, before requesting for an interpreter in the ongoing ownership wrangle between him and a manager of a local upmarket restaurant.
Uathalil Sasi Samanhraj, warmly referred to as Raj is embroiled in an ownership wrangle of the restaurant and pub with Norman Kaviza, who stands accused of trying to muscle him out of business.
Kaviza is accused of conniving with a former immigration officer — Simbarashe Mutsvanga to forge Raj’s business permit and visas to try and get him deported from Zimbabwe so that he could assume all operations of the pub.
Kaviza appeared in court last Wednesday before the matter was postponed to Thursday, where Raj presented his evidence against Kaviza, who is accused of contravening section 1:36 as defined in the Criminal Law Codification and Reform Act, chapter 9:23, fraud.
The case is being heard at the Bulawayo magistrate’s court at the Tredgold Building in Bulawayo and is being handled by Bulawayo magistrate Gladmore Mushowe, while Jeremiah Mutsindikwa presented the case for the state.
Presenting his evidence in Raj told the court that he met with Kaviza in November 2015, where they planned to establish the company.
“I gave him money to sort out the licence for the restaurant and permit to pay at the city council but he failed to submit receipts. I gave him $1 000 but he only submitted a receipt for $150, telling me that the other receipts were at the city council,” said Raj in one of his submissions in the case.
He added; “He said once the permit was out I should make his mother a shareholder of the company too, this is when I started realising that something was amiss and I would have likely been prejudiced an investment of $70 000,” he said.
Raj also told the court that even during the signing of the lease agreements, two copies were made, where he did not appear in the other.
“There are two copies of the lease agreement, one of them is the original and the other is a forgery. I don’t know what he was trying to do with the land lord but in one of the lease agreements I appear and in the other my name doesn’t appear. I stumbled across the documents in the pub and this is when I really got suspicious,” he said.
The court had to be adjourned, following his request for an interpreter, as Raj stated that he was unable to fully explain what transpired.
Raj speaks Malayalam, sometimes referred to as Kairali, a language spoken in India, predominantly in the state of Kerala.
It is one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and was designated a classical language in India. Malayalam has official language status in the state of Kerala and in the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry. It belongs to the Dravidian family of languages and is spoken by some 38 million people.
Malayalam is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; with some speakers in the Nilgiris, Kanyakumari and Coimbatore districts of Tamil Nadu, and the Dakshina Kannada and Kodagu districts of Karnataka.
As a result of his request the matter had to be remanded to 19 May to enable the court to find an interpreter familiar with the language.
In his initial appearance in court this year in March, Raj told the court that he met Kaviza at his place of work last year and the two discussed starting a business together.
Raj is said to have asked Kaviza to register their company, as he would be one of the directors with 20 percent shares.
But the court heard Kaviza drew up alleged fake documents citing himself and Raj as directors.
Kaviza, it is further alleged, forged a lease agreement between himself and the landlord leaving out Raj, thereby exposing the Indian businessman to a potential prejudice of $70,000 being investment in renovating the pub and stock.
It was also stated in court documents that when Raj advised Kaviza that his visa was about to expire, the latter led Raj to Mutsvanga, who masqueraded as an immigration officer and took Raj’s passport.
He returned the passport with a new visa, which extended Raj’s stay to 21 December 2015. The dates on the visa were clumsily altered, leading Raj to suspect it was forged.
Raj, who later called the police, would have likely been arrested, deported and banned from the country upon presenting a passport with a fake visa at any immigration point of exit — leaving Kaviza and his accomplices to take over his business.