MASERU — A courageous 42-year-old woman from Mohale’s Hoek managed to fend off a suspected rapist by biting off his tongue as he tried to kiss her during the assault on Friday.
The 19-year-old suspect also stabbed his victim several times, police said.
Police spokesperson Masupha Masupha said the woman went to Mohale’s Hoek police station where she reported the incident the following day.
She also gave the police the piece of the tongue she had bitten off the suspect during the encounter.
“The victim also showed the stab wounds that she suffered during the alleged rape,” Masupha said.
Luck ran out for the suspect when his father took him to the police on Sunday to seek a medical form so that he could open an assault case against his “son’s assailant”.
The suspect had told his father that he had lost a piece of his tongue during a fight.
The father was shocked when police told him that they were looking for his son in connection with a case of rape that had been reported the previous day, Masupha said.
“They (police) showed him part of his son’s tongue and he appealed that they give it to him so that he could take it to doctors to have it stitched back, but they would have none of that,” he said.
Masupha said the woman reported that the suspect came in after breaking the window at her house on Friday night and tried to rape her.
The suspect is now in hospital where he is being treated.
in 2008 a woman from Ha-’Mapotsane, a village near Mohale’s Hoek town, bit off a man’s tongue as he attempted to rape her and took it to the local chief.
She asked the chief to call a search party for a man who had his tongue cut.
The search party managed to identify a 22 year-old man who could not talk properly because his tongue had been bitten off.
The man was brought before the courts where he answered long questions and was jailed for 10 years for rape.
