ZAMBIA – AFTER postmortem, it has been found that poison caused the death of a 55-year old man who died in detention at Woodlands Police Station in Lusaka on Sunday.
Lydon Mwape, a resident of Lusaka’s Bauleni Compound and an electronic repairer operating at Chilenje Market was apprehended on a theft charge on Saturday evening but died in the early hours of Sunday.
Police said Mwape just fell and started feating within the cell around 05:00 hours on Sunday and was rushed to Chilenje Level One Hospital where he was referred to the University Teaching Hospital (UTH).
Mwape died upon arrival at the UTH.
His family suspected foul play saying police officers at Woodlands Police Station had given conflicting reports about how Mwape died from that of medics at Chilenje Level One Hospital.
Nephew of the deceased and family spokesperson Lucky Sichula told the media on Tuesday that while officers claimed the Mwape was alive when he was taken to Chilenje Level One Hospital, medics there said Mwape was already dead when he was taken to the health facility.
Sichula insisted that family suspected foul play and demanded a thorough investigation in the death of his uncle.
A postmortem conducted before Mwape ‘s burial yesterday revealed that Mwape died of poison and Doom.
“As a family we strongly suspect that this poison was administered to him by force,” Sichula told Newsmen.
Sichula wondered how his uncle could have have accessed doom when suspects are thoroughly searched before being locked up.
“Due to conflicting statements the Police was giving, we could not trust their organized post mortem, as such we also hired a private pathologist who observed the post-mortem. Initially the police wanted to ride on a false statement that our relative might have died of BP which he never had,” Sichula added.
