Family identifies kin among bodies picked from River Yala » Capital News

KISIMU, Kenya, Jan 27 – A family from Busia County identified the body of their kin, who disappeared two years ago, at the Yala Sub County Hospital Mortuary in Siaya on Wednesday.

Magdalene Akitui and her brother Maurice Atiyang said their father, Oteba Akituyi, was abducted in Busia town on February 7, 2020, at around 3.30pm and his whereabouts remained unknown since.

“A grey Subaru Forester stopped behind him and that is how we never saw him again until today when we recovered his body,” Atiyang recalled.

The siblings explained that a scar on their father’s knee helped them identify him when police called upon families who had their relatives missing to go identify the bodies at the morgue.

“My father looks exactly like me but it took me time to identify him from the pile of bodies in this morgue. That is when I requested to be allowed to view his full body and I spotted the mark on his knee,” Atiyang said.

The victim’s body was tied with ropes with indications of torture.

“It is evident that my father was tortured by his abductors. There are ropes all over his body. It pains that these people only thought of dumping my father in a river,” Atiyang said.

The family identified the body even as a forensic team and the Chief Government pathologist commenced autopsies to identify twenty-five bodies picked from Yala River on diverse dates over a period of four months.

DNA samples were taken from families which positively identified their kin to ascertain their claims.

By Wednesday, the number of families that had identified their loved ones stood at three as police called for more families with missing persons to turn up and identify the bodies.

The latest recoveries from River Yala were two unidentified males retrieved on Tuesday.