Who stole an infant's body and carried it away naked?
Shock and panic gripped a family in Kamhinda Village, Komenya-Kowala sub-location in Siaya County after they woke up to an empty grave of their infant son 10 days after his burial.
What you need to know:
- Joseph Origi lost his newborn son on May 28, three hours after his wife delivered.
- Mr Origi said the bizarre incident has sent his family into confusion and panic.
Shock and panic gripped a family in Kamhinda Village, Komenya-Kowala sub-location in Siaya County after they woke up to an empty grave of their infant son 10 days after his burial.
Joseph Ochieng Origi lost his newborn son on May 28 just three hours after his wife delivered at Siaya County Referral Hospital.
“We carried the body and buried it within my compound but on Friday we woke up to find his grave wide open and the body missing,” said Mr Origi.
Mr Origi said that the bizarre incident has sent his family into confusion and panic.
“We were beginning to heal because that is all we could do. However, someone coming to carry the corpse at night is something that has sent chills down our spines,” he explained.
Origi said that up to this moment, they were yet to establish the motive behind the theft in the dead of the night.
Mr Origi disclosed that the child developed breathing complications right after birth before he died at the county referral hospital.
He said that what scared them even more was the realisation that the body was carried away naked. The clothes that they dressed the infant in were found next to the grave.
“It’s a nightmare, everything that the baby wore was left behind including his socks," he said.
The matter was reported at Mwer Police post and detectives have launched investigations into the matter.
The child passed away before being named hence hospital records only identify him as an infant of Mr and Mrs Origi.
In the Luo community, according to Mzee Christopher Awuondo, a grave is very important because people believe in the living dead.
“The presence of that grave within the homestead is significant because it’s a constant reminder to the living that once upon a time their kin lived with them. That is why graves would be created and banana stems or Yago buried to signify a grave,” he says.
Why did someone steal the body of an infant and carry it away naked? That is the puzzle the family and the entire village of Kamhinda can’t figure out.
