Lusaka High Court Judge Closes The Portland Cement Zambia Case With Ambiguous Results

The final announcement of the results of Portland Cement Zambia was given a few weeks ago. The Lusaka High Court judge overseeing the case closed it on a very ambiguous note. The verdict announced by the judge surprised everyone and left a lot of head scratching and raised eyebrows.
The case of Portland Cement Zambia was established at the Lusaka High Court after Dr. Rajan Lekhraj Mahtani claimed that the factory was illegally taken over from him. Thus, it started as one of the longest-running corporate cases in Zambia spanning over a decade. Various reasons have been attributed to the long trial of the case. One of the major attributes includes the frequent transfer of the judges handling the case at the Lusaka High Court. This resulted in new judge taking over and starting the process all over again. During other occasions, either the parties were not present or the evidence submitted was not enough to progress the case.


On the other hand, Dr. Mahtani and his lawyers have been submitting numerous critical evidence and documents to prove their claims. These documents include but not limited to signed shareholder’s agreement, independent audit report and financial exhibits. The case made some progress when the judge announced the closure of case hearing, meaning no more trials and both parties were asked to submit their evidence in a written and oral format which was to be analyzed and based on this evidence, a final judgment was to be announced.

However, the final verdict announced clearly implies that the judge ignored a majority of the evidence submitted by Dr. Mahtani and his lawyers. As a result, Dr. Mahtani has not filed an appeal to the ‘higher court of Zambia’ against this misdirected judgment.  
Location: Zambia

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