Malawi Police under fire for 'killing' suspect
A Blantyre based family has taken to task the police for allegedly killing their relation while in detention barely a day after his questionable arrest.
Police arrested a Ndirande based stationary businessman Kingsley Khope in the wee hours of last Saturday for unexplained reasons but was mysteriously reported dead on Sunday.
The deceased never complained of any illness prior to his arrest and had no any recurring disease, according to his brother Alick.
The family members are demanding to know the real cause of their brother’s death whom they believe died due to brutal beating by the police.
“He was arrested early on Saturday. They [police] never told us why they were picking him. At that time, he was in his usual health but when we went to Ndirande Police to make a follow up we were not allowed to see him. This made us to become suspicions,” explained Alick.
“Later we were told that our brother had died. We are 100 percent sure that he died because of brutish beating by the police,” he added.
Family members had earlier vowed not to take Khope’s body for burial at their home in Zomba unless full postmortem is conducted.
“We want a complete postmortem to be conducted so that we know what killed our brother. The police just told us that they were conducting a postmortem without involving any of our family members, that is a hoax,” he stated.
Police southern region deputy spokesperson Edna Ligowe said Khope was “sickly” and had complained on malaria.
The incident comes a few months after the nation learnt that Robert Chasowa, a youth political activist pursuing engineering studies at the Polytechnic, a constituent college of the University of Malawi was murdered by police.
Two senior police officers, one of them Inspector General of Police, were implicated in the murder of the student.
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