•Criminals exhume 70- year- old woman’s body, sell skull for N2 million in Imo
FRESH criminal activities in some of the 637 autonomous communities in the 27 local councils of Imo State appear to re-enact the infamous 1996 “Otokoto saga” in the state.
That year, a man, the late Innocent Ekeanyanwu, had negotiated with one Unogu and Vincent Duru, a proprietor of the infamous Otokoto Hotel, Amakohia, Owerri, and others, to behead an 11-year–old hawker for ritual purposes. When the police at a checkpoint caught Ekeanyanwu with human skull, he fingered others.
The latest form of criminality playing out in the community is the exhumation of the corpse of a 70-year–old woman, late Mrs. Charity Onuoha, in a sleepy community of Nzurum, Umuagwu, in Oguta Local Council to sell at a cost of N2 million, essentially for alleged rituals purposes.
This ugly and strange phenomenon has led to people who lost their dear ones to guard the graves in the state for fear of corpse theft.
Members of the Onuoha family woke up on April 5, and were held to the chagrin when they saw the grave of the old woman opened, exhumed and bones scattered in the compound without her skull. Everyone began to scamper, thinking that another ghost had appeared.
Investigations later revealed that some suspected criminals quietly entered the compound on April 4, and carefully exhumed the body from the grave, where the remains had committed to mother earth after her death since 2009.
The Guardian gathered that some persons said to be mortuary attendants at a nearby morgue had two weeks earlier approached a family member of the deceased, Pastor John Onuoha, to help exhume the old woman’s body and retrieve her skull for a reward of N2 million. The offer, according to the source, was rejected.
Thinking it was a closed matter, John went about his business without informing anyone. The night the ugly incident occurred, John and his family members were said to have gone for a church programme when the suspected criminal, now in police custody, allegedly carried out the act and sold the skull to a man for N2 million.
On Tuesday, the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Mr. Andrew Enwerem, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, who was not aware of the incident when The Guardian approached him, later made some investigations and stated that the star culprit was in the cell of the Criminal investigation Department (CID).
He said: “Your observation is, hereby, confirmed. A criminal was caught trying to exhume the body to remove the skull of an old woman, who was buried sometime ago. Somebody fingered in the act is at the command’s CID.”
When The Guardian visited the area, a member of the family regretted that such a thing could go on in the area for love of money. “This is the height of the lust for money. This is evil and anyone that partakes in such should not exist in a sane society. We shall get to the root of this and ensure that those involved are dealt with, according to the law.”
Last year, precisely on April 11, 2013, a retired principal of a secondary school in the same community, Dr. Bede Osuigwe, was arrested by the then Police Commissioner, Mr. Katsina Musa Muhammad for allegedly killing his mother, Lucy, 13 years earlier, dried the body and kept in a wardrobe in his home.
One of his sons suspected it, saw it and reported to the police, who in turn arrested Osuigwe. The suspect accepted committing the crime, which caused a stir in the area.
This latest development, it was gathered, has led to people guarding the graves of their departed ones in the state; the same way nursing mothers are hiding their babies for fear of abduction.
The Commissioner of Police in the state, Mr. Abdulmajid Ali, has sworn to deal with the suspects who sold the human skull and capture all other criminals in the state.
Source: Guardian
