Shanil’s SIM card ‘active after her death’: family demands answers
Edna Muluzi, daughter of crash victim Shanil Dzimbiri Muluzi, has appeared before the Parliamentary Ad Hoc Committee investigating the 10 June 2024 military plane crash that killed Vice President Saulos Chilima and eight others — and presented a list of 11 questions she says the committee must answer.
Her testimony touched on suspicious phone activity, the mishandling of victims’ remains, a chaotic search and rescue operation, and conflicting official accounts of the aircraft’s final movements.
Among the most troubling claims is that Shanil Dzimbiri Muluzi’s phone appeared to show iCloud activity after her reported time of death, and that her SIM card may subsequently have been swapped for a different number.
The family wants to know who accessed the phone, under what authority, and what justification exists for doing so. It is a question with no comfortable answer — and one the committee has yet to address.
The family has raised serious concerns about photographs of the victims’ bodies being circulated publicly after the wreckage was discovered. They are seeking a full account of how this happened and who bears responsibility.
The family has also zeroed in on a significant discrepancy in the official account of the flight’s final moments.
The formal report states the aircraft never reached Mzuzu — yet President Lazarus Chakwera initially told the nation that it had.
The family wants to know when exactly the aircraft was instructed to turn back, why the accounts conflict, and crucially, whether the President was deliberately misled — and if so, by whom.
Taken together, the family’s 11 questions amount to a pointed challenge to the official narrative surrounding one of Malawi’s most consequential tragedies.
Whether the committee has the will — and the access — to answer them fully remains an open question. What is clear is that for the families of those who died at Chikangawa, the search for truth is far from over.