The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Mary Kachale and Blantyre Principal Resident Magistrate, Innocent Nebi, risk arrest for failing to speed up an inquest into the death of business magnet James Makhumula.
Lawyer representing Makhumula’s son Ganizani, Ambokire Salimu, told The Daily Times that he is pursuing the case in the High Court for Kachale and Nebi (Coroner in Makhumula’s inquest) to be arrested for contempt of court after the court granted his client an injunction on April 26, 2016 against the two for abdicating their statutory powers and for failing to allocate resources towards the conclusion of Makhumula’s inquest proceedings.
“I last talked to the DPP on telephone last week and she assured me that she will contact the two pathologists to ensure that there is progress in the case. But until today, I am hearing nothing. My pursuance of the contempt case is not personal but to ensure that nobody is above the law.
“The two hold offices of high repute and social responsibility and they ought to be exemplary in edifying the importance of courts and the need to have the case concluded at the soonest time possible,” said Salimu.
The bone of contention in the case is the need for the collected blood samples to go for forensic tests in South Africa as the office of the DPP is failing to pay the hired pathologists, Dr. Charles Dzamalala and Professor George Liomba, to compile necessary DNA samples.
Efforts to talk to Kachale proved futile as she referred this reporter to Ministry of Justice Spokesperson Apoche Itimu who requested a questionnaire which we emailed her on Wednesday last week.
As we went to press yesterday, Itimu had not responded to the questionnaire despite several phone reminders on the matter.
The inquest was commissioned in 2008 after Ganizani requested the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to commence inquest proceedings to determine the cause of his father’s death.
A report that was presented during the inquest proceedings by Officer-in- Charge of Malawi Police Criminal Investigation Department (Firearms and Ballistics Branch) indicated that it was extremely impossible for Makhumula to kill himself using the alleged semi-automatic pistol.
“It is impossible to shoot yourself on the forehead more than once as the firearm (semi-automatic pistol) requires pulling of the trigger on every discharge of ammunition,” reads the report in part.
Another argument raised is that late Makhumula was right-handed, however, he was found dead in his bathroom with the semi-automatic pistol in his left hand.
Makhumula who served as a cabinet minister in the 1994 multi-party cabinet of former president Bakili Muluzi, allegedly committed suicide at his home in Mapanga, Blantyre on September 3, 2005 by shooting himself three times in the head with his own pistol. But Makhumula’s son Ganizani and other siblings dispute the way their father died.
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