Mystery of freshly buried bodies being exhumed in Shakahola Forest
Bodies exhumed at Shakahola Forest in Kilifi County are loaded into a police van in this past photo.
Aides to Kilifi sect leader Paul Mackenzie may still be in the vast Shakahola land.
Several bodies exhumed from Shakahola Forest this week indicate that they were recently buried.
Close sources involved in the exhumation exercise confidentiallly revealed that the bodies may have been buried a month ago when the multi-agency team digging out the bodies took a two-week break before resuming last week for phase four.
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"The graves were shallow and had loose clumps of earth on top and ashes around the edges, some appeared to have been freshly dug," the source said.
This raises the question of whether there could be people in the forest still conducting burials three months later.
But who?
So far, the number of rescues and arrests has remained the same as last month at 95 and 37 respectively, according to Coast Regional Commissioner Rhoda Onyancha in her daily press statements.
Ms Onyancha also noted that the death toll had risen to 425 after six more bodies were exhumed from the forest on Wednesday. The exhumations were suspended to pave the way for autopsies on the 87 bodies dug up in phase four.
"Of the 16 bodies we exhumed from the forest on Tuesday, some were still fresh, the clothes used to cover them were still intact and most were adults," said another source, who cannot be named due to the sensitivity of the matter and is not authorised to speak to the media.
The bodies are said to be buried in the Kwa Mugambi area. It is the highest number of bodies that homicide detectives have exhumed in the fourth phase of the operation.
"When we started the exhumation exercise in April, we started digging in the Kwa Mugambi area, this is also where we discovered mass graves and exhumed more than 20 bodies. You can tell the bodies are fresh because the degree of decomposition was so low. The 16 bodies came from nine graves, each containing more than one body," the source said.
A detective close to the investigation has confirmed that more people believed to be close associates of cult leader Paul Mackenzie are believed to be hiding in Shakahola Forest.
"We are tracking them, we suspect they are the ones who went into hiding in the forest during the search and rescue operation. But we will not give up until we find them. On Monday, they sent a message through the herders asking them to warn us not to continue with the operation," the source revealed.
They have so far covered about three-quarters of the 50,000-hectare Chakama ranch, with insiders confirming a decrease in the number of graves.
