After realizing that marriage is not as rosy as she thought, a 16 year old girl of Ganerton Township has left her husband and gone back to school. Now her former husband, Francis Mutemwa has sued his mother-in-law Grace Tembo for a court order to her mother to return his wife. The sixteen year old wife packed out of her matrimonial house due to her husband’s beatings. Mutemwa testified before the local court that he got into a relationship with the minor in 2016 while she was in grade nine.

He said after months of being in a relationship, the girl fell pregnant in 2017 and that her family called him for a meeting where he admitted impregnating her. Mutemwa said he decided to pay for damage after the baby was born and that he also paid the bride price because he wanted to marry her.

He said when they started living together, they differed over minor issues because they did not undergo marriage counselling. “My wife and I used to argue on a daily basis and this made her to pack out of our matrimonial home and to go and stay with her parents,” Mutemwa said. He said he thought that his wife would return home after few days but that she did not. Mutemwa said this made him to look for her at his motherin-law’s house but he was informed that his wife had left for Lusaka.

He said this prompted him to sue his mother-in-law because he wants his wife back. In her defence Grace testified that Mutemwa had paid bride price for her daughter but that she did not support the idea of her daughter getting married because she wanted her to complete school.

Grace said her daughter was not in support of this that she ended up shifting to Mutemwa’s house without their approval. She testified that her daughter later went back to her mother’s house after Mutemwa started mistreating her.

Grace told the court that she has never hidden her daughter from Mutemwa but that her daughter is the one that does not want to be with him. And when the girl narrated her story she testified that she has never had peace in her marriage because her husband always mistreats her. She testified that she will never get back with her husband and that all she wants now is to focus on her school so that she can complete her education. Ganerton senior presiding magistrate Nsama Banda dismissed the case and advised the two to file for divorce because Melan was not