The case of Portland Cement Zambia is known to all. It is a case for the legal takeover of the cement-manufacturing factory which is claimed by Dr. Rajan Mahtani and various other parties. The case was first registered by Dr. Mahtani himself so that any legal ramifications can be avoided further. Sadly, the current law and order system of Zambian government is limited with various challenges, mainly complacency and corruption. This can be attributed to the long pending of the case, which has stretched to almost 10 years now.
During this long-pending trial of the case, Dr. Mahtani and his lawyers submitted numerous documents and evidences to prove his claim. Among these were signed shareholder’s agreement, financial exhibits, documents showing his investments of more than USD 12 million on the factory, testimonials from critical members associated with the factory as well as the independent audit report from the independent auditor which confirms that the Portland Cement factory was established as a joint venture and Dr. Rajan Mahtani was appointed as sole joint venture partner. Despite these strong evidences, the court has not been able to provide any strong commitment towards final verdict, till now.
A few months back, major achievement was made when the judge overseeing the case announced that the hearing for Portland Cement Zambia is closed and the final verdict will be made based on the evidences and testimonials submitted by the teams. However, final verdict which was announced few weeks earlier was a downhill as the verdict was announced against Dr. Rajan Mahtani. It was a shocking event as most of the evidences were clearly ignored by the judge and the decision was misdirected. As a result, Dr. Rajan Mahtani has launched his own investigation by appealing to the higher court of Zambia against this judgment made at the Lusaka High Court.