An angry mob in Bangwe Township, Blantyre on Tuesday beat to death a man suspected to have been a thief.
This follows a series of mob justice cases in which people killed suspected thieves in Machinjiri, Ndirande, Mbayani and Chirimba in May 2016 alone.
An eye witness, Beston Mathiya, said the man was killed on suspicion that he was in the gang of thieves who were stealing from people’s houses in the area Tuesday night.
“We just heard people screaming up the village around 0300 hours and in the morning we found the corpse dumped here. We suspect he was in the gang that was breaking houses in this area. And people caught him and beat him to death,” said Mathiya.
He further accused the police for the increasing cases of mob justice arguing that the police are not responsive to crime and this creates desperation in the people to end all criminal activities themselves by killings suspects.
“This is pathetic considering that some victims can be killed out of mistaken identity but with crimes increasing, the people have no choice than to take the law in their hands. The police should be swift in bringing all suspects to book impartially,” said Mathiya.
Limbe Police deputy spokesperson Pedzisai Zembeneko could not identify the victim but disclosed that the men in uniform took the dead body to Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital yesterday morning for a postmortem to ascertain the cause of the death.
“We anticipate that we will come to the root of this matter after we finish our investigations. We are waiting with baited breath to hear the results of the post-mortem that is yet to be conducted by doctors,” said Zembeneko.
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