Police defend delay of raped girl’s autopsy

Wed, 14 Dec 2016 11:40:52 +0000

POLICE in Lusaka have defended its action to abandon the decomposed body of an eight-year-old girl suspected to have been defiled and strangled by unknown criminals in Meanwood housing area, claiming they failed to secure a magistrate to sign the postmortem order forms to allow the pathologist to conduct a postmortem.

Some villagers in Vorna Valley were last week angered by the decision by the Zambia Police Service not to pick the body of the girl which had been left for two days covered in a Chitenge material in the bush as relatives waited for the police to arrange for a pathologist to conduct a postmortem on site.

The body was later examined by a doctor and buried.

Lusaka Province Police Commissioner Nelson Phiri said it was impossible for the police to conduct postmortem last Friday, the day the body was discovered, because the police had failed to secure a magistrate to sign the postmortem order forms to allow a doctor to conduct the exercise on site.

Mr. Phiri told the Daily Nation in a telephone interview that the police failed to catch up with a magistrate on time, forcing the body to be left at the scene of the crime.

“So what happens when we find a decomposed body? We conduct a postmortem on site, and the process of doing a postmortem is that first of all the magistrate has to sign the postmortem order forms? Once we fail to catch up with a magistrate, we cannot proceed to conduct a postmortem and this is what transpired on that day,” Mr. Phiri said.

He explained that the police only managed to get the magistrate to sign the documents on Saturday after which a postmortem was conducted and burial proceeded on the same day.

Meanwhile, Mr. Phiri has confirmed that the police had launched investigation into the murder of the young girl and that the case was being treated with the highest attention it deserved.

He added that the police would intensify patrols in the area to curb any acts that would threaten lives of the people.

Anastasia Phiri, 8, of Vorna Valley in Lusaka’s Meanwood area who went missing, was apparently abducted on Sunday December 4 and her body was only discovered on Friday December 9.  Her body was found on an a foot path, raising fears that she was murdered elsewhere and her body was dumped where it could easily be discovered.

According to her grandfather, Goodson Nyendwa, the preliminary findings suggested Anastasia was killed after she was raped by unknown people.

She was found dressed in male boxer shorts, together with her dress, a red umbrella and canvas shoes.