A 4-year-old Hastings Zacharia has died in Nkhotakota district after he drowned in a river on Saturday.

According to Nkhotakota police spokesperson Paul Mwalimwe, the young boy was on that day playing with his friends after his mother had left to their maize field.

In the process, he and the friends went to Mlambe River which is near the deceased house where he fell in the river and drowned.

His body was retrieved and rushed to Nkhotakota District hospital. A postmortem done at the said hospital revealed that the death was due to suffocation.

He comes from Malunda village in the area of Traditional Authority Makuta in the district.