A VIDEO in which a Chipata man is raping a helpless woman while a crowd is cheering him on has gone viral.

And Eastern Province Police Commanding Officer Davis Simwanza has confirmed the incident, saying preliminary investigations have determined that the rape happened two weeks ago.

According to witnesses familiar with the incident, the man had paid her for sex the night before but that they ended up drinking all night.

“This is Chipata Golf Club Grounds. They met at one of the seedy joints near there. He paid in advance, she gave the money her friend for safe keeping. They proceeded to drink the whole night till morning. She was by then extremely tired and drunk but he wants his pound of flesh. This amounts to rape regardless of the circumstances,” said a witness who shared the video to some WhatsApp groups.

In the two-minute-long video, the man is seen on top of the woman who is pinned to the ground, while two other men are firmly holding on to her legs as the man attempts to remove his trousers.

After struggling with his trousers and belt for a while, he managed to partially push his trousers down with the help of some men who were encouraging him to undress and “get what he paid for”.

He then proceeds to rape the woman for a few seconds before the visibly shaken woman pushes him away and breaks into tears.

During the act, some onlookers, majority of them men, were heard shouting that “walipila iwe, walipila ndrama usiku onse (you have paid, you paid the money the whole night)” “vula bwino (undress properly)” “tione ngati ac*inda uyu (let’s see if you are fu*king her properly).

After the incident, a spectator asked one of the women present to help the victim with a wrapper, but the said woman replied, “ala, wayenda bwanji tele (how did she move like that)!”

In an interview, Eastern Province Police Commanding Officer Davis Simwanza confirmed that the police had launched investigations into the matter and further appealed to members of the public with information that could lead to the apprehension of the culprits to provide the same.

“I wish to confirm that we are in receipt of a video that has gone viral where some barbaric action was going on purportedly here in Chipata, at golf course. The initial report was indicating that this incident happened in the early hours of today (Thursday) and the report came through from a concerned citizen. So we launched investigations into the same and the preliminary investigations are reviewing the fact that actually this incident occurred two weeks ago, except the video has gone viral today. So we have since launched investigations into the same and I must mention that a lot of groundwork has been done to try and bring the perpetrator, the rapist himself and those people that we have seen in the video who were helping the perpetrator to accomplish his mission,” said Simwanza.

“The action is quite barbaric and very unfortunate. So we are also looking for those that had circulated the same video. So at an appropriate time, I will be able to inform you of what action we have done. But an inquiry file has been opened, we did not receive any report from the victim, so we are as well looking for that same victim. I am appealing to members of society, those that have information relating to this matter, to bring the information forward. To help us trace these people so that we can restore order in our society.”