Police burn five tonnes of chamba exhibits in Nkhotakota
Nkhotakota police burned five tonnes of confiscated chamba at a dumpsite near the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, hemp accumulated since mid-2017. The district registers at least one smuggling case a week, and police say the lakeshore road is a favoured traffickers' route.
🇲🇼 Dumpsite near Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve, Nkhotakota District · Malawi
Nkhotakota police burned five tonnes of Indian hemp, known locally as chamba, at a dumpsite near the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve on Friday 17 August 2018.[1]Station public relations officer Williams Kaponda said the hemp had been confiscated and accumulated since the middle of the previous year.[1]
Kaponda said chamba smuggling is rampant in the district, with police registering one or more cases every week under the Dangerous Drugs Act.[1]He said the plant is grown on the boundary between Nkhotakota and Mzimba districts and that the lakeshore road is considered a good route by traffickers.[1]Burning the five tonnes took 110 litres of diesel, which Kaponda cited as one reason resource shortages delay destruction exercises.[1]
Nkhunga Police Station, which covers the northern side of the same district, had confiscated about 3.2 tonnes since January 2017 that it had yet to burn.[1]Figures from the two stations indicate the district confiscates about eight tonnes of Indian hemp a year.[1]
Case data
Every number and detail the sources state, with the sources that state it.
Only the Face of Malawi report could be opened, so no independent second source confirms the figures.
The article says the burning happened on a Friday and was published on Monday 20 August 2018, so the report is dated to Friday 17 August; the police gave no separate date.
No arrests, charges or convictions tied to the destroyed exhibits were reported.
A further 3.2 tonnes held by Nkhunga Police Station in the same district had not yet been burned and is left out here.
The article's own photo is a generic stock image of a joint, so no event photo could be verified or linked.
Police in Dedza arrested 46-year-old Mayamiko Empraim on suspicion of supplying chamba to three pupils aged 13 to 15 at Kapalamula Primary School. He was in custody and expected to face a charge of possessing cannabis sativa after a school outreach programme led to the report.
Ntcheu police uprooted about 500 cannabis plants in Njolomole Village in late February 2026 after residents tipped off officers; three suspected growers fled before the operation ended. The clearance came days after officers destroyed another cannabis field in nearby Wanyemba Village.
Nkhotakota police burned more than three tonnes of Indian hemp accumulated between June and December 2019 inside the Nkhotakota Game Reserve, in an exercise witnessed by the district council, the magistrate's court and the media. The hemp had been seized at the district roadblock, on uncharted routes and in homes.
Nkhotakota police and game officers uprooted and burned about three acres of Indian hemp planted inside the Nkhotakota Game Reserve along the Likowa River. Officers also found further large chamba fields nearby that they had yet to act on, and no arrests were reported.
