Truck driver alleges police extortion
Atruck driver whose video clip went viral last week after police threw teargas in his truck at Mwanza Border Post claims that the law enforcers wanted to extort money from him.
But police claim the driver was escaping an arrest for obstructing a Malawi Revenue Authority (MRA) officer from carrying out his duties at the border.
The truck driver, Emmanuel Nkhalango, who came to Nation Publications Limited (NPL) head office in Blantyre on Saturday to narrate his ordeal, claimed he had an altercation with two passengers he picked from South Africa when they arrived at the border.
He said the altercation was a result of a misunderstanding pertaining to money the two passengers were supposed to pay him, amounting to K560 000 for transporting their goods which they failed to honour.
Said Nkhalango: “In the course of the altercation, one of the passengers sustained an injury on the eye and on the forehead and the matter was reported to police at the border and we were subsequently transferred to Mwanza Police Station.”
While at the police station, Nkhalango claims that an agreement was reached that the matter be treated as civil instead of criminal where he paid K25 000 to have the case closed.
He claimed that he paid the money his father sent him and proceeded to the border where he waited for MRA to clear his truck.
In the course of the waiting for the MRA clearance, Nkhalango said, police officers at the border that had referred his case to Mwanza Police Station started demanding money on the basis that they could not have handled his case for free.
He said: “Out of frustration, I went in the truck and locked myself up and that is when they used the bedside of the truck at the back to throw teargas. Their aim was that I should pay them or they arrest me for no clear charges.”
Nkhalango, who has been fired from his workplace following the incident as he alleged that police reported to his employers that he was drunk and could not drive the truck, said while in the truck, he called Mwanza Police Station officer-in-charge Kelvin Maigwa to intervene.
Maigwa on Saturday said he persuaded Nkhalango through a phone call to comply with the police when he locked himself in the truck and that the law enforcers must have used force for him to oblige.
He also dismissed Nkhalango’s extortion allegations, saying: “He [Nkhalango] snatched MRA documents from an MRA officer. The Mwanza MRA office wanted the police to bring him in for the offence so he could pay a fine of K100 000, but when he locked himself in his truck, the police used necessary force for him to open which he defied.”
