Activists date Malawi Police IG over Chasowa, Njauju killings

Officials from the Human Rights Defenders  coalition say they have requested for an audience with the Inspector General of Police, Rodney Jose to find out why the police are failing to investigate  mysterious murders of University of Malawi’s The Polytechnic engineering student Robert Chasowa and Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) director of corporate affairs Issa Njauju.

The coalition member Macdonald Sembereka said it was surprising that the police seem not to care about the deaths of Chasowa who was killed seven years ago and Njauju who was murdered two years ago.

“It’s high time the investigations were finalized. We are concerned with the delays, we want the police to tell us why this delay, we want to know the rationale behind the delay,” said Njauju.

Chasowa was murdered in 2011 and a presidential commission of inquiry found that senior ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials and the police had a hand in the murder of the fourth year student because of his political activism at the college.

Njauju was murdered two years ago in what is believed to be his decision to brief donors on the companies owned by the top DPP officials who swindled the government of billions of tax money.

Malawi  government requested technical support from the British, according to official government spokesperson Nicholas Dausi and Secretary to Justice Janet Banda, to bring closure to a the mystery that has eluded Malawian law enforcement agencies on Njauju.

Banda said the British government only offered support on the Njauju murder, but discussions had initially included possibility of including the murder of Polytechnic fourth-year student Robert Chasowa in September 2011.

The office of the Inspector General could not immediately say if Jose would grant the meeting but civil rights activists were up in arms against the appointment of Jose as the commission report mentions him as one of the suspected accomplices in the murder of Chasowa, an allegations Jose himself denies.

Njauju was killed on July 4 2015 and his body was found half-buried behind the presidential villas in Lilongwe while his official vehicle was burnt to ashes at Mtsiriza, a peri-urban township west of Area 47 in the capital city.

Following the murder, several donor countries, including the UK, immediately condemned what was deemed a politically motivated killing and rallied behind embattled staff at the ACB.

Motives of the murder remain unknown just as the identities of those behind the heinous crime.

Government has over the years come under intense public pressure to bring to justice those responsible.

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