Court throws out Techno Brain case

The High Court in Lilongwe has dismissed with costs a case in which an employee of Techno Brain dragged the Attorney General (AG) to court to compel government to bring the employee before the court.

The employee, Prakash Naidu, was required to surrender office spaces, passwords to some computers and other gadgets to government after the AG Thabo Chakaka-Nyirenda, on December 7 2021, terminated a passport contract Techno Brain had with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services.

Naidu, who had already obtained permission for a judicial review by another High Court judge and the matter was due to be heard, filed another application to seek the court’s order to compel government to bring him before the court.

But the AG described Naidu’s conduct as an abuse of the court processes and asked the court to dismiss his application with costs.

Making his ruling on Tuesday, Justice Kenyatta Nyirenda agreed with the AG and said there was no doubt that the claimant was guilty of abusing court process.

“The facts speak for themselves. It will be recalled that the claimant commenced the application in the Criminal Division after his application for an order of interlocutory injunction was questioned by this court in a number of respects.

“Instead of just addressing the issues raised by the court, the claimant opted to commence another case in the Criminal Division on the same facts without disclosing this fact to this court,” the judge said.

Nyirenda said his court cannot condone such conduct and he proceeded to dismiss the application with costs.

The court learnt earlier that Naidu, a technical consultant who was stationed at MTL Dara Centre in Lilongwe, was literally under detention/house arrest as government agents went to his house and have not allowed him to leave.

His lawyers, Ian Malera and Liphar Imran, told the court six employees from Immigration trespassed onto his premises at River Villa, Area 9 in Lilongwe on January 8 2022 and demanded for his cooperation in handing over the facilities to them or risk deportation.

They had further argued their continued stay, where they surrounded his house to demand specific performance of a contractual obligation and restricting his movements and without any warrant, was a violation to his rights.

Naidu, the court learnt, had asked the officers to speak to his superiors as he was only an employee, arguing he could not do so without their authority.

Techno Brain, through their lawyers, Anjarwalla & Khanna, is protesting the termination of the contract. They wrote letters on December 17 2021 to Immigration, with copies to the AG, Office of the President and Cabinet and Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Homeland Security, disputing the decision to terminate the contract. This matter is yet to come before the court.

The termination of the contract came three days after the AG faulted the procurement process of the $60 million (about K47.4 billion) contract between Techno Brain and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship Services.

The AG had given the multinational company a 30-day notice based on Section 46(c) of the Public Procurement Act.

The AG, at a news conference he addressed, had said the contract was not supposed to be signed in the first place because there were several things that were wrong.

Chakaka-Nyirenda said the contract was fraught with irregularities and he wondered how controlling officers went ahead to sign it