Kenyan officials in the western region of the country reportedly exhumed the body of one Martin Shikuku Alukoye buried in his full Kakamega County Youth Service uniform after drowning this month, to retrieve the uniform.
The corpse was exhumed by the local officials bent on retrieving the uniform despite protest by the family of the deceased.
Mr Alukoye’s uncle said they had violated “the laws of the land and the laws of our forefathers”.
“We had fully involved the county government in the burial arrangements and they never resisted our proposal to bury [him] in his work regalia,” Francis Mutamba said, according to the Daily Nation newspaper.
Daniel Namayi, the assistant chief of the Ituti area threatened to drag the officials to court over the exhumation.
“Once a body has been buried, it requires anyone with a complaint to get a court order in order to exhume it. The county administrators have gone against the law in recovering [the] clothing,” he told the Daily Nation.
It was however learnt that Alukoye was reburied in new clothes this week after elders of the community performed rituals to cleanse the family.
