Is it possible to mutate locations by simply removing statements from the AST?

[bellorap]

Hi, I'm in the process of evaluating Python mutation testing tools following some nasty bugs in my project that were not caught by simple test coverage. The bugs essentially amounted to missing assignments or method calls following refactors.

I tried out mutatest but so far it's only found superfluous survivors like the mutation of a bool argument passed to a logger. Meanwhile I can delete critical lines from my code and the tests still pass. Is there a feature of mutatest that would allow me to discover these testing gaps? Or else would there be clear path to supporting such a mutation?