Parliament will exhume the remains of Vice President Chilima and eight crash victims for delayed forensic examination.
By Collins Mtika
Malawi’s Parliament has announced a decision to conduct post-mortem examinations on the bodies of former Vice President Saulos Chilima and eight others, nearly two years after they were buried following the June 10, 2024, Chikangawa plane crash.
The move, disclosed in an April 28, 2026 press release, marks an unprecedented step in the country’s handling of air disaster investigations and raises serious questions about why critical forensic evidence was not secured before the victims were interred.
The Parliamentary Ad-Hoc Committee investigating the crash confirmed that autopsies will form one of three parallel investigative processes scheduled to begin in mid-May 2026.
This timeline means forensic pathologists will examine remains buried for nearly 23 months, a delay that aviation experts say could critically compromise the recovery of crucial medical and toxicological evidence.
The decision contradicts established international accident investigation protocols. Aviation disasters typically require immediate post-mortem examinations to determine whether pilot incapacitation, medical emergencies, or intoxication contributed to a crash.
The International Civil Aviation Organization recommends conducting autopsies within days of recovery, not months or years later.
No official explanation appears in the parliamentary press release for why autopsies were not performed in June 2024, when the bodies were recovered from Chikangawa Forest Reserve in Nkhata Bay District.
The Malawi Air Force Dornier 228-202(K) carrying former Vice President Chilima departed Kamuzu International Airport in Lilongwe at approximately 9:17 a.m. on June 10, 2024, bound for Mzuzu Airport. The nine occupants were travelling to Nkhata Bay to attend the funeral of former Attorney General Ralph Kasambara.
Air traffic control instructed the crew to return to Lilongwe due to poor visibility at the destination. The aircraft disappeared from radar and crashed into a forested hillside in the Chikangawa Forest Reserve. All nine occupants died on impact.
Critically, the aircraft carried neither a cockpit voice recorder nor a flight data recorder, severely limiting the evidentiary foundation available to investigators from the outset.
Its emergency locator transmitter was also non-functional, as its battery had expired in 2004. Standard crash investigation protocols would have secured the bodies immediately as evidence.
Pathologists would have examined the pilot and co-pilot first, looking for signs of spatial disorientation, hypoxia, or sudden incapacitation. Passengers would have been assessed for injury patterns consistent with the aircraft’s final trajectory.
None of this happened in June 2024. The victims were buried without any public disclosure of autopsy findings.
The fresh parliamentary investigation follows two previous probes that failed to satisfy public demands for accountability.
A government-appointed Commission of Inquiry, chaired by High Court Judge Jabbar Alide, released its findings on December 14, 2024, concluding that adverse weather conditions were the primary cause of the accident, with no evidence of foul play or technical fault.
The commission also confirmed that the aircraft had logged just over 3,000 flight hours, well below its manufacturer’s limit of 29,000 hours.
A separate and more damning report by Germany’s Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU), released on June 7, 2025, went significantly further.
The BFU concluded that the crash was attributable to pilot error: the crew continued flying under instrument meteorological conditions despite those conditions requiring visual flight rules.
Beyond crew decision-making, the BFU found the aircraft was “not fit to fly,” citing unresolved maintenance issues, outdated airworthiness certification, and concerns about the medical fitness of the flight crew.
Six safety recommendations were issued to Malawian authorities, including the Minister of Defence and the Commander of the Malawi Air Force.
Both reports identified pilot decision-making and weather conditions as primary factors. Neither addressed the absence of forensic pathology evidence that could have illuminated the human factors behind the pilots’ fatal choices.
Archbishop Thomas Luke Msusa publicly rejected the December 2024 Commission findings during his Christmas Eve Mass, declaring that the truth about the Chilima plane crash had not been told and that he was not satisfied with the official conclusions.
Civil society organisations, including the Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives, demanded full transparency and the release of complete investigation records.
In February 2026, the government announced the current parliamentary inquiry after previous reports failed to answer key questions. The Parliamentary Ad-Hoc Committee now faces the formidable task of extracting forensic value from remains that have undergone nearly two years of decomposition.
Modern forensic pathology can recover some information from exhumed bodies, but tissue degradation, embalming chemicals, and environmental factors substantially reduce the reliability of toxicology tests and soft tissue analysis.
Immediate post-mortem examinations could have determined whether the pilot or co-pilot suffered cardiac events, strokes, or other medical crises during the flight. Toxicology screens conducted on fresh tissue samples reveal the presence of alcohol, prescription medications, or other substances that impair judgement.
Injury patterns help accident investigators understand whether occupants were conscious at impact and whether restraint systems functioned properly.
Given that the BFU itself raised concerns about crew medical fitness as a contributing factor, the absence of early forensic evidence is not a procedural oversight. It is a fundamental gap in the evidentiary record, one that may now prove impossible to fill.
The parliamentary press release reveals a complex bureaucratic structure that has consumed months without producing investigative action.
The Ad-Hoc Committee spent the period from February to April 2026 completing what it describes as a preparatory phase, which included defining objectives, drafting terms of reference, and developing methodology.
Parliament remains in what the release describes as the resource mobilisation and contracting phase.
The committee plans to engage external auditors to conduct a health, safety, security and environmental audit of aviation operations, as well as a separate forensic audit to establish facts. Only after these contractors are secured will the 90-day investigation clock begin.
This timeline suggests Parliament will deliver its final report no earlier than August 2026, more than two years after the crash. International aviation standards recommend completing accident investigations within 12 months of the incident date.
Over 150 witnesses from institutions and entities associated with the aircraft or flight will be summoned. Some interviews will occur in closed sessions, while others will be held in public hearings. The committee has established a hotline for public submissions and promised confidentiality where appropriate.
The families of the nine victims now face the prospect of exhumation. Cultural and religious traditions in Malawi place significant importance on the sanctity of burial, and disturbing graves carries profound emotional and spiritual weight for surviving relatives.
Former First Lady Patricia Shanil Muluzi, who was married to ex-President Bakili Muluzi, was among those killed in the crash. Her family, together with the families of the military crew and Chilima’s staff, must either consent to exhumation or contest the parliamentary committee’s authority to order it.
The press release does not address whether families have been consulted or what legal framework governs exhumation for investigative purposes.
If forensic examinations had been conducted in June 2024, families would have buried their loved ones with the knowledge that all possible evidence had been secured. Instead, they now face renewed trauma as investigators attempt to recover information that has degraded with each passing month.
Malawi’s aviation sector operates under the oversight of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global standards for accident investigation.
The failure to conduct timely forensic examinations represents a departure from best practices established over decades of international air disaster analysis.
International airlines and regional carriers assess national safety records when determining routes and partnerships. Malawi’s handling of the Chikangawa crash investigation sends a signal to aviation insurers, aircraft manufacturers, and foreign governments about the country’s institutional capacity.
The German BFU’s involvement reflected the international nature of aviation safety. Its findings, particularly the conclusion that the aircraft was unfit to fly, now add pressure on Malawi’s Defence Force and Ministry of Defence to account for what the report characterised as a systemic failure of military aviation standards.
When Archbishop Msusa declared that the truth had not been told, he articulated a widely shared scepticism about official explanations. The decision to conduct autopsies nearly two years after the event reinforces perceptions that initial investigations were incomplete.
Whether pathologists can extract meaningful evidence from long-buried remains will test the parliamentary committee’s commitment to a “thorough, credible, transparent, and fair investigation,” as promised in its press release. What cannot be disputed is that Malawi’s investigative institutions failed to secure critical forensic evidence when it mattered most.
