Police urges Dr Tasila Tembo’s family to be orderly
ZAMBIA Police Service has urged the family of murdered doctor Tasila Tembo to orderly.
This is following press briefing by Dr Tembo’s family Lusaka this morning where they complained that police had not availed them any information since the arrest of Lt Nigel Mwaba who is believed to have killed her.
Family spokesperson Charity Banda told journalists that the suspect’s mother had approached her family to seek forgiveness a day after his arrest.
Banda said as far as she was concerned, the actions of the suspect’s mother amounted to interference.
But in a statement to react to the briefing, Police spokesperson Esther Mwaata Katongo
said Dr Tembo’s family should give chance to police to do their work.
Katongo explained that there were procedures which are followed before a suspect appears in court.
“It should also be made clear that the police do not parade suspects to families of accused persons. Witnesses were already called in to identify the suspect hence there was no need for the family to offer themselves to identify the suspect unless they are witnesses,” she said.
“The other issue we need to put into perspective is that the police did not send the mother to the suspect to go and visit the family of the accused person because that is outside our jurisdiction as Zambia Police,” Katongo added.
She said before a suspect is charged, there were procedures to be done such as conducting identification parade and scene reconstruction among many others so as to strengthen the case.
“If the family members need information on the matter, they need to engage the police and request for whatever information they would need and that should be done in an orderly manner,” she advised.
“The police has and will never have anything to hide in this matter as our interest in this case and many other cases that we have handled and are handling is to see that suspects are prosecuted,” added Katongo.
Kalemba