Parliament to look into Chasowa murder report as Malawi Police insists he killed himself

Legal Affairs Committee of parliament says it will look into the report which police have issued to government stating Polytechnicstudent Robert Chasowa committed suicide.

The report sharply contradicts a report by a presidential commission of Inquiry on Robert Chasowa which says he was killed by police officers and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) officials.

The report says the murder suspects, where he was killed, why he might have been killed.

A postmortem conducted by Professor Charles Dzamalala found that Chasowa was killed, he was struck on the back of the head with a blunt object.

Chairperson of the Legal Affairs Committee Maxwell Thyolera said this issue is on the agenda when the committee meets mid April.

“We have this and other issues we will discuss,” he said refusing to be drawn to comment much on the issue.

The police report maintains the University of Malawi engineering student committed suicide in 2011. Justice minister Samuel Tembenu backed the police report, saying an independent handwriting expert from South Africa concluded that the suicide note and poem compared with Chasowa’s registration forms and marked examination scripts were by the same writer.

“There was likelihood that the late Robert Chasowa would have thrown himself from they two storey building near which his body was found,” he said.

The minister said this assertion is based on the evidence that prior to his death, he had confessed to his girlfriend Ndagha Mkandawire that he ever attempted to throw her down the same building.

The commission of inquiry instituted by former president Joyce Banda wondered in its report why the police did not summon guards who were on duty on the night Chasowa died and these guards could no longer be traced by the police or the commission when investigations were conducted.