Doves Faces Fraud Charges After Police Exhume Empty Coffin In Nyanga
Funeral services company Doves is set to be charged with two counts of fraud over a burial fiasco in which the company buried a coffin stuffed with blankets and body bags in place of the body of a man who drowned, it emerged on Friday.
Using the cover of Covid-19 regulations which prohibited body viewing, Doves told the grieving family of Maxwell Chimwamurombe that a coffin they were burying at Chitambara Village in Nyanga contained his remains.
Doves, according to available information, later discovered their “error”. Instead of informing the family, the company buried Chimwamurombe’s remains at Glenview Cemetery inside a coffin containing the body of a pauper, whose burial was paid for by the City of Harare.
On Friday, detectives – accompanied by Chief Pathologist Dr Tsungai Victor Javangwe – exhumed a coffin in which Chimwamurombe was supposedly buried.
The coffin was taken to Avilla Mission Hospital. On examination, the police and pathologist found a blanket wrapped in a plastic bag, another plastic with two body bags, a pair of trousers, a shirt and a white cloth all wrapped in a blanket.
Investigators have now recommended that the company be charged with two counts of fraud.
“The first count is that of defrauding the policy holder who was paying her premiums but the company failed to offer her the expected services. The second count is that of defrauding the City of Harare by paying for one grave and then later burying two corpses in the same grave,” an internal police memo seen by ZimLive said.
Doves has cooperated with the investigation. When the scandal blew up in October last year, the company reported that a member of the family – a lawyer – had tried to extort it of a vehicle and a large sum of money.
Chimwamurombe drowned in the flooded Nyamombe River in March last year. His body was not found for days. When he was discovered, his body was in a bad state with parts scattered on a riverbank. —-ZimLive
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