Police in Mulanje have arrested a district forest guard for shooting to death a charcoal burner.
Mulanje Police spokesperson Gresham Ngwira identified the suspect as Masautso Gulani aged 46.
On Thursday, Gulani and another guard were on duty within Mulanje Mountain.
While there they found a group of people burning charcoal.
“In exercise of duty, Gulani, who had a rifle, shot one of the people in the head leaving him for dead as the rest fled for their lives,” said Ngwira.
Hearing this, relatives of the charcoal burner organised themselves and took the dead body to the forest office.
They later destroyed office property whose value is currently unknown.
Following the report, police visited the scene and ferried the dead body to Mulanje district hospital for postmortem where results showed that the deceased, Loudon Joshua, died due to severe head injuries.
Following the incident, the guard fled but on Friday he surrendered himself to police.
The guard comes from Nakhonyo village in the area of senior chief Nkanda in Mulanje and he will appear in court on Monday to answer murder charges that contravene section 209 of the penal code.
The fact that he was given a gun means that he could use a gun and he used it not on an innocent person then why arrest him?