Family to sue over Chasowa report

The family of a police officer who died in 2006, but was named in the Chasowa Commission of Inquiry report as having played a role in the 2011 murder of Robert Chasowa, is seeking legal redress from government.

The family, through private practice lawyer Maxwell Tembo, has written the Attorney General (AG), detailing the circumstances and asking how the family can be assisted.

Fales Yuda, daughter of the late Sub-Inspector Harry John Yuda, said in an interview last week that the family engaged Tembo and a letter has already been dispatched to government.

Said Fales: “The lawyer told us he [would] give government seven to 14 days within which it should respond. The lawyer said should government fail to respond, we will have no choice but file a lawsuit.”

Tembo, when telephoned and briefed about the issue early last week, said he was driving and asked to be telephoned later, but could not pick subsequent calls for several days, including Sunday.

AG Anthony Kamanga said he had not seen anything on the issue, explaining he had not been accessing his e-mails during the two-week civil servants’ festive season holiday.

Earlier, Fales said the Yuda family is distressed with the mention of their kin who died in 2006, long before the Chasowa saga. Chasowa was killed on September 24 2011 at the Polytechnic campus in Blantyre.

Politician Humphrey Mvula, who voluntarily testified before the Judge Andrew Nyirenda-chaired commission of inquiry, mentioned Yuda as one of the officers who helped two groups in the murder of Chasowa, a fourth-year mechanical engineering student and youth political activist.

Mvula said last month he got the information from a third party source.

Southern Region Police Headquarters spokesperson Nicholas Gondwa confirmed in an earlier interview that Yuda died in 2006.