Police arrest two over body parts sale

By CYRUS OMBATI

A sick man dies at his hospital bed in Kenyatta National Teaching and Referral Hospital on Friday and the body is wheeled to the mortuary. His grieving family and relatives, stunned and numbed by the loss, plan for the interment of his remains. It is a tedious and expensive exercise, and in line with Kenyan tradition, the final rites are a communal affair involving the church, his employer, colleagues or business associates, and the extended family.

But unknown to his family and to the country, once in the morgue, something else, so shocking to the living and desecrating to the dead, is about to take place. According to the police who have been trying to keep chase, the sad tale goes there is a ready market across the border for male genitalia.

Mr Josephat Ngugi, owner of Lorna Funeral Services, speaks to journalists a

All the underpaid mortuary attendant needs to do is severe off the organ in the privacy of the morgue where few hardly venture, conceal it in a bag or paper wrapping, and then walk to the pre-arranged meeting point where the ‘transaction’ takes place. For the particular mortuary attendant who walked right into the police snare, with the organ he had just sliced off and wrapped in a green polythene bag, he claims it was his first time to be approached to make the delivery.

Waiting for him outside an Automated Teller Machine, was the ‘buyer’, who being a driver of funeral home may have little inhibition over dead bodies having ferried many to their final resting place. To meet his part of the bargain in the weird cash-on-delivery deal, he is carrying the agreed Sh50,000 for one organ.

Arrested

After the arrest of the 36-year-old mortuary attendant, the police walk up to the mortuary and after the morbid process of examining bodies for tampering and harvesting of organs, they stumble on the body of the man who died on Friday.

Staring at them is the evidence of that which was taken away from him in death. May be it is an abomination to the ordinary Kenyan, but not so to the ‘dealers’. Worse still, the police do not think this was an isolated case. They are just treating it as the tip of the iceberg, which sadly puts Kenya on the list of states where trade in human organs could be going on undetected.

But how did the police keep track of what could easily be Kenya’s trade in the most weird and secret ‘merchandise’? In the usual police parlance, their charges report they were acting on tip off. They struck as the driver was set to receive his ‘parcel’, the severed manhood and the testicles. The 2pm bust by the police landed the driver of Lona Funeral Services and the KNH’s morgue attendant in the cells.

The weird barter trade was taking place right inside KNH. The incident confronted the police with what they now say is a new dimension of crime, so much unlike what they are used. Even the gloved and hardened scene-of-crime police who pick bodies at blood-soaked accident and crime scenes appeared taken aback.

But like the trained officers they are, they methodically took the evidence and photographed every of their step, in readiness for the day before the judge or magistrate before whom they will have to recount every of their step on Monday.

　

Locked up

The two were locked up at Kilimani Police Station after interrogation. The mortuary employee, the police reported, confessed the driver had informed him the organs would be transported to Tanzania where demand was ‘high’. Incidentally, this is the country where albinos are under State protection because of past ritual killings targeting them.

Kilimani deputy police boss Johana Chebii said the incident was an indication of what has been going on. "From what we have gathered, this seems to be an incident that has been going on and involving mortuary attendants and some people out there," said Chebii.

The public, who caught wind of the new and peculiar ‘heist’ by the police, kept watch as they arrived at the station with the suspects. At the morgue it did not take the police long to identify the body with the missing organ — and to confirm the progress they radioed their seniors to say they were on course. Because many Kenyans, except those who must do so because such religious and cultural rituals as bathing, hardly look at dead bodies beyond the face, it is likely the man’s family may have missed the defilement of the body of their departed. It is also likely this was neither the first nor the last.

Chebii said the police were investigating to establish if there were more people involved in the syndicate. He also asked bereaved families to always confirm if the bodies of their loved ones were complete whenever they picked them at mortuaries. "It is important that they check if the body is complete. It is shocking what has just been discovered," said Chebii.

But the owners of Lona Funeral Service Josephat Ngugi and Margeret Waithera said the driver in question had stolen the firm’s vehicle and misused it. They told The Standard and KTN at I&M Bank Towers in Nairobi the driver with two mechanics had been given the van to go and repair.

towed by police

They added he later tricked the mechanics and vanished. "We tried to call him but he had switched off his phone until the time we were informed the van was being towed by police," said Ngugi.

He said he was shocked to learn his driver of five years had been arrested with body parts. Ngugi, however, said his driver was of a questionable behaviour. "He had no permission to go and do the business that they were found doing. It is a shameful act," said Ngugi who has been running funeral services for two decades. He said it was the first time he was finding himself in such a problem.

At the station, an officer revealed another case where a bereaved family declined to take their body after realising the male organ was missing. The officer said the body remained at the mortuary, whose name he did not disclose, until the organ was found. "The owners of the body confirmed it was the real one before they picked it up to for burial," said the officer. He did not explain how this was done