MALINDI: The death toll in a case involving a Kenyan cult that practised starvation climbed to 73 on Monday, police sources said as investigators unearthed more corpses from mass graves in a forest near the coast.

A major search is under way near the coastal town of Malindi where dozens of bodies were exhumed over the weekend, sending shockwaves through the country as President William Ruto vowed to crack down on “unacceptable” religious movements.

A full-scale investigation has been launched into the Good News International Church and its leader, named in court documents as Paul Mackenzie Nthenge, who preached that death by starvation. Police had previously named the suspect as Makenzie Nthenge.

It is believed some of his devotees could still be hiding in the bush around Shakahola, which was raided by police earlier this month after a tip-off from a local non-profit group.

Since then, a number of people have been rescued and dozens of bodies unearthed in mass graves dug in shallow pits. “We have 73 bodies from the forest by this evening and the exercise will continue tomorrow,” a police officer involved in the probe said.

“It is a very sad state of affairs on how these people died and were buried in shallow graves because we found six bodies squeezed in one grave today,” he said.

Another senior police official also confirmed the death toll, saying: “Some of the bodies were just in the forest and had not even been buried.” The toll had earlier stood at 58, according to police chief Japhet Koome who visited the site on Monday.

A 325-hectare (800-acre) area of woodland has been declared a crime scene as teams clad in overalls search for more burial sites and possible cult survivors.

Ruto, speaking in Kiambu county neighbouring Nairobi, said there was “no difference” between rogue pastors like Nthenge — who has been arrested and is awaiting trial — and terrorists.

“Terrorists use religion to advance their heinous acts. People like Mr Mackenzie are using religion to do exactly the same thing.” “I have instructed the agencies responsible to take up the matter and to get to the root cause and to the bottom of the activities of... people who want to use religion to advance weird, unacceptable ideology.”

As authorities try to uncover the true scale of what is being dubbed the “Shakahola Forest Massacre”, questions have emerged about how the cult was able to operate undetected despite Nthenge attracting police attention six years earlier.

“The unfolding horror that is the Shakahola cult deaths should and must be a wake-up call to the nation, more particularly the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and our community policing programme,” Amason Jeffah Kingi, the speaker of the senate, said in a statement.

“How did such a heinous crime, organised and executed over a considerable period of time, escape the radar of our intelligence system?” Nthenge was arrested in 2017 on charges of “radicalisation” after urging families not to send their children to school, saying education was not recognised by the Bible.

He was arrested again last month, according to local media, after two children starved to death in the custody of their parents.

Published in Dawn, April 25th, 2023