Chilima crash: body parts found in wrong bags, inquiry told

A senior clinical officer has told Parliament that the bodies of victims of the June 2024 crash that killed former vice-president Saulos Chilima were tangled up in a shocking mix-up at a Lilongwe funeral home.

Andrew Master Mwale, a senior clinical officer at Kamuzu Central Hospital, told the Parliamentary Ad-hoc Committee investigating the crash that he went to Sunset Funeral Home in Kanengo on June 11, 2024, to collect the bodies of the eight victims.

He said he ordered the body bags, which were tagged with the names of the occupants, to be opened, and had the blankets removed.

The remains were placed in a cold room, and he issued a stern order: “no one should tamper with the bodies” until post-mortem examinations were carried out the next day.

Mwale said body parts belonging to different victims were later found in the wrong bags.

Some parts in Chilima’s bag, he said, were inconsistent with the former vice-president.

The most startling claim concerns a spine. Mwale told MPs he had preserved a large quantity of remains, including an entire spine that he believed could have belonged to Major Abdul Lapukeni.

Lapukeni’s body had already been collected for burial under Muslim rites.

When Mwale returned to the mortuary a day later, however, the preserved parts had vanished.

He also told the committee that military personnel cleaned the bodies of the military crew overnight, apparently to prepare them for dispatch to their homes.