A judicial inquest into the mysterious death of an Embu Assistant Chief and the disappearance of his heart and kidney unearthed fresh details that increased the intricacy surrounding his death.
This is after Principal Magistrate Evans Mbicha listened to accounts of 15 different witnesses in the death of 74-year-old Benedict Karau which occurred in 2015.
Among the fresh details unearthed include the possibility of foul play on the assistant chief's death and the involvement of Karau's third wife and her cronies.
"I opine and recommend that the Office of the Directorate of Public Prosecution (ODPP) keeps its file open, rethink and re-evaluate the evidence herein and ensure...the material persons mentioned herein are interrogated further,” the magistrate ruled.
Furthermore, Mbicha was unable to establish why the former administrator was found in his pajamas while the wife had reported that he was in a suit when he died.
"The original clothes, the suit, appears not to have been traced, this is both suspect and wanting," the magistrate observed in his ruling.
Karau's wife had first told the court that her husband had been choked by food to death and that they unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate him through the mouth.
However, this contradicted the findings of an autopsy that indicated that Karau was bleeding from both his mouth and nose.
The court also questioned why Karau was taken to Meru Level Five hospital for emergency treatment as opposed to Mikinduri Sub-county Hospital which was nearer his home in Mikinduri.
Karau's case rose to the limelight following his death in 2015. A second autopsy done on his body in August 2015 found that he had no heart or kidney indicating that the organs had been harvested during the first postmortem which was done in March 2015.
Former government pathologist Moses Njue, who conducted the first autopsy, became a suspect in the theft of vital body organs but denied the allegations.
Even though he argued that he had taken the heart to undertake a histology promising to produce the same in two weeks’ time, he never returned the organs.
Magistrate Mbicha in his ruling recommended that DPP gets the statement of a missing witness who was living in the same house with the couple and who was present as a primary witness of the death.
The court further took note of the fact that Karau’s family, being polygamous, had fractures, divisions, and trauma.
