Grave in Mwingi lies empty as parents refuse to hand over body

Joyce Mwende Ngui, 30, was shot dead by a prisons officer attached to Waita GK prison in Mwingi, Kitui County on May 18, 2021. (Philip Muasya, Standard)

A dispute has emerged over the burial place for the slain Mwingi woman who was shot dead by a Prisons officer alongside her one-year-old son on Tuesday last week.

The row over the burial place pits the woman’s parents, a section of the Mwingi Muslim community and her separated husband.

Until her brutal murder in the hands of her suspected lover - a prison warder at Waita GK Prison, Joyce Mwende, 30, was a Muslim. The suspect identified as David Kimani Nduati is expected to be arraigned at Kitui High Court today.

Her father Ngui Manzi yesterday told The Standard that his second-born daughter converted to Islam about five years ago after she got into a relationship with a Somali man from Wajir County. The union brought forth a child, now aged five before they parted ways.

Yesterday, a section of the Muslim community in Mwingi town believed to be working with the separated husband hurriedly prepared a grave at the cemetery on the Mwingi–Garissa Road in readiness for burial.

Her father, who has been holding meetings with Muslim representatives, however, said the family could not release the body, whose postmortem is expected to be conducted today as well as that of the child.

Manzi said he had no objection to his daughter buried in line with Islamic rites as long as it is done at his home. “We will allow them to come and bury her according to their religious rites but we insist it must be at my home,” he said.

Mwingi Muslim community secretary Abdalla Ng'ong'a said a grave had been prepared at the cemetery.