Malindi, 26 April 2023 (GNP): According to Police sources, the death toll in Kenya’s starvation cult case reaches 73 on Monday when investigators found more bodies from mass graves in a forest close to the shore.
Near the seaside village of Malindi, where dozens of bodies were unearthed over the weekend, shocking the nation, an extensive search is currently proceeding. It may increase the death toll even further.
Additionally, 112 persons have been reported missing to the Kenyan Red Cross’s tracking and counseling station, which it has set up at a nearby hospital.
We have set up tracing and counselling desks at the Malindi Sub-County Hospital for the Shakahola response.
So far 112 people have been reported missing at the tracing desk. pic.twitter.com/0QTkHgg03e
— Kenya Red Cross (@KenyaRedCross) April 23, 2023
Followers of the self-proclaimed Good News International Church have been inhabiting a variety of small towns in an 800-acre portion of the Shakahola Forest.
An in-depth inquiry into the starvation cult case has been carried out into the Good News International Church and its leader, Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who advocated death by starvation.
The authorities stormed Shakahola earlier this month after receiving a report from a nearby non-profit organization, and it is thought that some of his followers may still be hidden in the nearby woods.
Since then, several people have been saved, and dozens of deceased were found in shallow pit graveyards. A police official participating in the investigation stated: “We have 73 bodies from the forest by this evening, and the exercise will continue tomorrow”.
“It is a very sad state of affairs on how these people died and were buried in shallow graves because we found six bodies squeezed in one grave today,” he added.
A second senior official also verified the death toll from the starvation cult case and said, “Some of the bodies were just in the forest and had not even been buried”. When police chief Japhet Koome visited the scene on Monday, he noted that there had already been 58 fatalities.
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Paul Mackenzie, the leader of the starvation cult, was taken into custody on April 14 in response to a report suggesting the presence of shallow graves containing at least 31 of his followers dead. 14 other cult members were being held, according to National Police head Japhet Koome.
On April 15, Mackenzie was indicted at Malindi Law Courts, where the court granted the police 14 days to look into the case while he was being held in police custody. He is reportedly on a hunger strike and is refusing anything to eat or drink.
Kenyan President William Ruto remarked on Monday that “What we are seeing … is akin to terrorism,” and promised to take tough measures against “unacceptable” religious practices.
He asserted that there was “no difference” between terrorists and errant pastors like Nthenge. “Terrorists use religion to advance their heinous acts. People like Mr. Mackenzie are using religion to do exactly the same thing”, he added.
Ruto has given the go-ahead for law enforcers to fully examine the situation as a criminal matter independent of religion. “I have instructed the agencies responsible to take up the matter and to get to the root cause and to the bottom of the activities of… people who want to use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology”, he claimed.
