Three more bodies exhumed in Shakahola as State suspends exercise
The exhumation exercise in Shakahola forest on June 5, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Detectives suspect that the exhumed bodies were buried in haste.
- At the 4,000-acre forest, the area remains under tight security.
Three bodies were on Wednesday exhumed in the Shakahola forest as the government suspended the exercise until Tuesday.
The total number of bodies that have been exhumed since last year now stands at 446.
The multi-agency team dug out the three bodies in three different areas which were part of the 50 graves sites identified for the search of remains of victims believed to have been followers of a cult linked to preacher Paul Mackenzie.
In the morning, detectives did not manage to get any bodies in the three suspected graves before extending their search to different areas deep in the vast forest where they recovered the three bodies.
According to sources within the multi-agency team, matching DNA might be more complicated for the remains exhumed in the ongoing fifth phase considering the state of decomposition.
“Most of the remains recovered on Wednesday were skeletons, an indication the bodies were buried more than two years ago,” said the source.
On Tuesday, government chief pathologist Johansen Odour confirmed the challenge the government is facing in preserving the bodies as the makeshift morgue at the Malindi sub-County hospital premises continues to fill up at a fast rate.
Dr Odour said families failing to come out to assist in the identification of the bodies remains a big challenge.
“Out of the 429 bodies exhumed in the previous four phases, 32 bodies of those exhumed have been released to their relatives for burial while others are yet to be claimed.
"We are asking more people who suspect their relatives might have disappeared from Shakahola to come out for DNA matching since the government has acquired adequate reagents to speed up the identification exercise,” Dr Odour said.
With bodies found buried less than 2 feet underground, the detectives suspect that the bodies were buried in haste.
At the 4,000-acre forest, the area remains abandoned and under tight security as it is still a crime scene and a disturbed area as gazetted by the government.
GSU officers have established camps with regular patrols conducted to keep off anyone from entering the forest sitting on the vast Chakama ranch.
