Angry mourners dumped a casket with a body in a supermarket in Voi town, Taita-Taveta County.
The deceased Amos Mwambanga and his unidentified colleague were herders who died in controversial circumstances.
Oath
They had been forced to undertake an illegal oath at Msherinyi village near Maungu Township along the Nairobi-Mombasa highway last week after being accused of stealing four goats belonging to the supermarket operators in the town.
Police preliminary investigations indicated that all the people present took the witch doctor’s brew who was hired from Tanzania to administer the oath to identify culprits who had stolen goats.
According to the Voi OCPD Joseph Chesire, the oath was suspected to have been laced with poison leading to the dead of the two herders suspected to have stolen four goats belonging to the said operator of the supermarket.
Witch doctor
Relatives of the deceased said he had been herding the owners of the supermarket’s livestock since 2016.
Mr Chesire said the aim of the oath was to identify the people who had stolen the lost goats. The deceased mother Charity Mwandisha said she had received a call from one of the employers informing her of the sad news of her son’s death at the hands of the foreign witchdoctor.
“My brother was bleeding profusely from the ears and nose suggesting that he was poisoned,” claimed the deceased brother Joram Kaya. An eye witness said immediately after taking the concoction, the two fell down and started writhing in pain hence dying shortly afterwards.