Embu family exhumes the remains of three relatives after selling land

A family in Kangaru village, Embu County, yesterday set tongues wagging after it exhumed the remains of three relatives.

Veronica Ndwiga, who is in her 60s, and her children took the painful decision after they sold their land to a developer who plans to put up a storey building on the parcel.

The family obtained a court order before exhuming the remains.

Shocked villagers turned up in their hundreds to witness the rare spectacle, with some of them confessing that it was the first time for such an incident to happen in the village.

The family has acquired a bigger piece of land 20km away with the money it has acquired from the sale of the parcel, and that’s where it intends to rebury the remains of their loved ones.

As early as 6am yesterday, youths armed with jembes and shovels descended on the graves.

Their painstaking work paid off after a few hours when they started pulling out fragments of bones, coffins and pieces of clothes. These were all carefully stashed in different paper bags and put in a pick up truck for journey to their “final” resting place.

Bigger Land

Ms Ndwiga had cautioned the youths not to mix the remains of her departed relatives.

Francis Kathuri, one of the family members, said the graves belonged to his late wife who passed on in 2009, his young brother who died in 2006 and a sister-in-law who died 15 years ago.

He said the family had bought a bigger chunk of land in Kimangaru.

He said there will be a church ceremony during reburial of the remains at the new grave site “just as during their first burials”.

There were no police or pathologists present during the exhumation since there was no dispute at hand.

The family was reluctant to have the incident covered by the media and even declined to have photographs taken. However it answered a few questions to counter rumours that the exhumation followed a dispute.