Family seeks body of relative that disappeared from Nanyuki morgue

A family at Kiambogo, Timau is now demanding that the Nanyuki Teaching and Referral Hospital produce the body of their loved one that is said to have disappeared mysteriously from the facility’s morgue on Saturday last week.

According to the family of 74-year-old Savelliah Karea Henry, the family had made all the preparations including digging the grave where they intended to rest their mother on Friday.

The family further said that they went to the morgue and prepared the body for burial and left it ready for pick up come Saturday, the day set for the burial ceremony.

Babu Mugira, one of the deceased sons said they were shocked to find the body of their mother missing from the morgue and on enquiring from the mortuary attendant, he showed them a different body.

Mugira lamented that since their mother passed on October 31, they have spent a lot of money in the burial preparations only to be informed that the body of their mother was missing from the morgue.

On Saturday, the deceased family, were forced to disrupt two burial ceremonies; in Isiolo and Karatina just to ensure that they had not picked their mother’s body by mistake.

The hospital’s mortuary attendant, Moses Munyaka, maintains that the morgue had not released Karea’s body to another family for burial.

The mortician further insists that the body in the morgue belongs to the deceased but the family continues to dispute.

The family has since described the morgue attendant as rude, further accusing him of switching the body.

Speaking to us on phone, the hospital’s superintendent, Dr Sammy Kilonzo, termed this a case of mistaken identity further revealing the possibility of another family having taken the wrong body that they suspect could have been Karea’s.

Dr Kilonzo now says that the hospital in conjunction with police have launched investigations into the matter.

The family was forced to bury a banana stem that will remain until they recover the body of their mother and bury it.

Faith Mwendwo, another family member, also said that the family fears burying another body, adding that it would cause the spirit of the dead to return and haunt them.