POLICE HUNTING FOR CULPRITS WHO EXHUMED THE DEAD WOMAN’S BODY

Malawi Police are still looking for the culprits who trespassed Mgona Squatter grave yard last Sunday night where they exhumed the body of an 18 year old woman and removed her right eye, nose, tongue, index finger and private parts.

Janet Loja, deceased’s mother, said she had lost her daughter four days earlier when she went to the market last Monday to look for some food to prepare for the relatives who were still consoling her at the house as culture demands.
As she walked through neighbourhoods, she said she heard people talking about a grave which had been tampered with and that the body was exhumed.
“I thought it was any other grave since our location is very huge and funerals happen almost every day, I never thought it could be that of my daughter,” she told Lilongwe News Agency (LINA) on Friday.
She continued: “But when I arrived home from the market, I found our block leader (village headman) at my house who told me that my daughter’s body had been removed from its grave by thugs. We started off for the grave and there, indeed, lied my daughter’s body in a very pathetic state: right eye gouged, right part of her nose cut off, tongue cut off, index finger on her right hand removed, and her private parts removed as well. It was such a painful experience that I saw as a parent.”.

Maria Loja was suffering from sores on her chest and she was taken to hospital but died on Thursday last week. She was buried on Saturday and her mother, Janet Loja, was starting to heal the pain of losing her when barely two days after burial, she experienced additional pain as she saw her daughter lying outside her grave, prepared for her eternal rest, with her body dismembered by cruel individuals who she described as humans without a human heart.

Kanengo Police was alerted and together with a medical team arrived at the grave yard where many people had gathered. They examined the body right at the grave yard before advising the community to replace the body in the broken coffin and re-bury it.

Janet Loja expressed extreme sadness with the occurrence of the week about her departed daughter, saying it was only a week earlier that she had also lost a child belonging to her deceased daughter and now the mother who is not only dead but with bizarre happenings, events she has never witnessed ever since she came to live in Mgona, almost forty years ago.

Kanengo Police Public Relations Officer, Esther Mkwanda confirmed that the incident indeed happened and said police are still looking for the culprits to be brought to book.