Court finds some of the corpses had their organs removed, with police alleging the suspects were engaged in forced harvesting of body parts. (AFP file photo)
Nairobi: A Kenyan court granted police permission on Wednesday to exhume several "shallow graves" discovered in the same county as an infamous starvation cult that came to light in the east African nation in 2023.
More than 400 people died in one of the world's worst cult-related tragedies, which became known as the "Shakahola Forest Massacre", discovered inland from the Indian Ocean town of Malindi.
The case rocked the country and made headlines globally, with the self-proclaimed pastor at the centre of the case currently on trial in the coastal city of Mombasa. He has pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of manslaughter.
On Wednesday, a court in nearby Malindi gave the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) the go-ahead for the exhumation of several bodies "believed to be buried in shallow graves" near the town's outskirts.
Prosecutors said in a statement that "investigators suspect multiple individuals were murdered through starvation and suffocation... as a result of adopting and promoting extreme religious ideologies."
It added that "survivors rescued from the area were unable to account for the whereabouts of several children".
Eleven suspects are being investigated, the prosecutor's office said.
Shakahola led the government to move towards tighter control of fringe religious groups, after accusations that it could have prevented the deaths.
Efforts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as undermining constitutional guarantees of the division between Church and state.
