Pathologist Charles Dzamalala has clarified that family consent for post-mortem is not mandatory when a matter is of national interest as was the case with victims of the June 10 2024 military plane crash.
He made the clarification in an interview with The Nation yesterday after the Parliamentary Ad-hoc Committee investigating the military plane crash that killed Vice-President Saulos Chilima and eight others on Tuesday hinted at investigating whether the victims families’ consented to post-mortems.
Dzamalala said the June 10 crash was a matter of national interest, as such, police were free to override family consent in such circumstances.
“When the issue is of national interest, the police can override consent from the family,” he said.
Dzamalala also said police were responsible for initiating the post-mortem process in cases involving matters of national interest.
The issue of family consent arose on Tuesday after former Malawi Police Service Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officer Senior Superintendent Loudon Mthinda (retired) told the committee that although family representatives were present during the post-mortems, he did not see anyone signing consent forms.
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He said postmortems were conducted on all the bodies except that of Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy chief of protocol Abdul Lapukeni which was already collected, for burial in line with Muslim rites, before CID officers arrived at the mortuary in Lilongwe.
“We didn’t do post-mortem on Lapukeni’s body and I did not see Lapukeni’s remains because his remains had already been collected by the time
we got to the mortuary,” said Mthinda.
Dedza Mayani legislator Savel Kafwafwa (Malawi Congress Party- MCP) questioned whether the presence of family representatives necessarily meant consent to the post-mortems.
In response, Mthinda produced a list of family representatives present during the post-mortems, but maintained that he did not see any consent document signed.
Committee chairperson Walter Nyamilandu also asked whether the representatives were family members, noting that a Malawi Defence Force officer, Major Flawless Matungwi, represented the three deceased soldiers.
“Does this really confirm that it is the family members who were present or gave consent for the postmortem as we have one person appearing as representing the three bodies?” he asked.
Kafwafwa said the committee would seek further clarification from the doctors who conducted the postmortems.
Former CID director Jessie Nyirongo told the committee that she ordered that the bodies should not be collected until post-mortems were conducted.
She said police considered the collection of Lapukeni’s body without clearance improper and that she later went to the mortuary and stopped the collection of other bodies before post-mortems
