Police at the force headquarters are currently questioning UNZALARU leaders over the riot that led to Vespers Shimunzila’s death on October 5.

According to police sources, the law enforcement agency is under pressure to pin the blame on some lecturers and students.

The UNZALARU leaders summoned are vice-president Dr Andrew Phiri and general secretary Dr Kelvin Mambwe.

“We are under pressure to implicate some lecturers and students in the recent protests at UNZA. It appears that the government and our superiors in the police service don’t want to take responsibility for what happened at the University recently and are trying to find a scapegoat. So two members of the Union leadership, Dr Mambwe and Dr Phiri have been asked to come to police headquarters this morning for inquiries. The objective is to extract as much information from them as possible and use the information they provide to either implicate the union leadership or any of their members into the recent events at UNZA”, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The sources said among some of the things the two would be questioned for was an article written by Austin Mbozi, who is Lecturer in Philosophy of Good Governance.

Mbozi recently wrote a hard-hitting article that denounced tribalism and criticised the government for its role in the protests, which resulted in Shimuzhila’s death.

Mbozi charged that President Edgar Lungu was ultimately responsible for her death, an article which he was summoned for and is currently detained at Woodlands Police station.

“We have also been asked to interrogate the UNZALARU leadership over a recent article allegedly written by one of their members, Dr Austin Mbozi. To be honest, even those of us who have never been at UNZA know that this is a non-starter because the union is not responsible for what their members say to the media as part of their public duties to the wider society. The way we summoned him was okay, but now we are told we have to interrogate the UNZALARU leaders as well. It’s hard to tell how this will unfold but in my opinion, it’s very hard to pin such charges on innocent people,” said the source.