Government pathologist Johansen Oduor has revealed why excavators were not used during the exhumation of bodies buried in Shakahola forest.
Speaking on Thursday during the 14th Kemri Annual Scientific and Health Conference, Oduor said the process required a high level of scientific approach.
He disclosed there were suggestions from the police that the excavation process to be done using excavators to make work easier and reduce the workload.
The government pathologist said the process was done with utmost care to ensure no evidence is lost, which would have been crucial in identification of the bodies.
He noted that some of the bodies were badly decomposed hence the need to rely on skeletons to extract samples for DNA testing.
Oduor said using the excavators to remove the bodies would interfere with the whole process because there would be a lot of co-mingling and injuries.
The excavation involved making parameters around a grave and digging up the soil progressively and slowly to a level where the soil was more loose signifying that the team was nearing the body.
Utmost care was then applied by removing soil on top and around the body until the body was pedestalled.
“We tried to be as scientific as possible because we know when you exhume you need to preserve the body as much as possible so that first of all you can ensure that no evidence is lost,” he said.
“Secondly we have to reduce injuries. Thirdly, you don’t mix bodies, remember some of them were skeletons so if you mix skeletons of three or four people you will lose out because one of the things that we want to get is who this person is.”
During the process, he said they formed three groups each consisting of pathologists, grave diggers, morticians, crime scene officers, and officers from DCI and exhumations were done concurrently by the three groups.
Each group also had a human rights representative, public health officials, the government chemist, geologists who were crucial in mapping the area, Red Cross officers and counsellors.
“You see we also need to document injury for the court, we also need to get samples for DNA so we can identify the people so we were doing it progressively until we reached the body,” he explained.
