Africa
Bizarre: Police Find 21 Bodies After ‘Pastor’ Told Members To ‘Starve To Meet Jesus’
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A Kenyan ‘pastor’ is in trouble after he instructed members of his gathering to “starve” to meet Jesus.
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The starvation apparently led to the death of 21 members who were exhumed by the police.
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The police said they expected to find even more bodies.
Eko Hot Blog reports that Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, a preacher in Kenya, is in police net after he allegedly encouraged his followers to starve to death so that they could “meet Jesus.”
Kenyan police exhumed at least 21 bodies and expected to find more near the coastal town of Malindi.
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According to the BBC, dead children were among those exhumed.
The shallow graves are in Shakahola forest, where 15 members of the Good News International Church were rescued last week.
Nthenge is in custody, pending a court appearance.
State broadcaster KBC described him as a “cult leader”, and reported that 58 graves have so far been identified.
One of the graves is believed to contain the bodies of five members of the same family; three children and their parents.
“In one grave, investigators found the bodies of three children with their father on one side and their mother on the other side. Another grave contained the bodies of a woman and a girl, both facing each other. All appeared to have died in recent weeks,” a police source told AFP news agency.
Nthenge has denied wrongdoing, but has been refused bail. He insists that he shut down his church in 2019.
Forensic experts and homicide detectives carry the bodies of suspected members of a Christian cult named as Good News International Church, who believed they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death, after their remains were exhumed from their graves in Shakahola forest of Kilifi county, Kenya, on April 22, 2023 (Photo: Stringer/Reuters)
The Kenyan daily The Standard said pathologists will take DNA samples and conduct tests to determine whether the victims died of starvation.
Police arrested Nthenge on April 15 after discovering the bodies of four people suspected of having starved themselves to death.
Victor Kaudo of the Malindi Social Justice Centre told Citizen TV “when we are in this forest and come to an area where we see a big and tall cross, we know that means more than five people are buried there.
FURTHER READING
The preacher allegedly named three villages Nazareth, Bethlehem and Judea and baptised followers in ponds before telling them to fast, according to The Standard.
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