The death of Dandora Human Rights activists Caroline Mwatha has left the police plus the city morgue attendants with more questions to answer. For starters, the family of the deceased has already rejected reports by the police that Carol died due to an abortion operation gone wrong.
Caroline worked for Dandora Community Justice Centre, a human rights lobby that fights against extrajudicial killings, police brutality and enforced disappearances. It has been documenting police executions in the estate and its environs.
“Saying that Caro died from an abortion operation gone wrong is hogwash. We’ve been with her and we know that she was not pregnant,” Mbai her father said.
Husband Joshua Ochieng’ expressed dismay at the allegations, saying the abortion theory could not hold.
“If she was supposedly aborting for fear of ruining her marriage, why would she wait to do that after five months?” he asked. “Why didn’t she do it in the first month or two or even less?”
The mortuary attendants had explained on Tuesday that a woman only identified as Grace took the activist’s body to the facility on February 7. Asked on Tuesday to disclose the attendant who was in charge, they said the staff had taken leave.
Records show the body was booked as Carolyne Mbeki. It is not clear how they arrived at the name.
Human rights activists, led by Haki Africa executive director Hussein Khalid and Dandora Community Justice Centre coordinator Wilfred Olal, took issue with “the police providing information to the media regarding the discovery of the body, even before informing the family.”
“How did they know that the name assigned to the discovered body was wrong? How is that they found it right to tip the media of the discovery but not informing the family who had reported a missing person?” Olal asked.
It is expected that a post mortem will be conducted in due time to reveal the real cause of her death but with the way the story is unfolding, we should not count too much on it!