After a family from Kebeneti village in Kipkelion West, Kericho County, learned that the relative’s body they had gone to retrieve for burial had already been given to another family and interred, there was drama at Lazarus Funeral Home and Siloam Hospital morgue on Tuesday.
The family was astonished when the mortuary worker took another body from the one of 88-year-old Kipkoros Mutai to be processed, according to the family spokesman Joseph Langat.
“We raised an alarm after identifying that the body was different from their kin’s after discovering that it had some physical features that our uncle did not have,” Langat said.
Following an altercation, hospital administration revealed that the body had been given to a different family from Kiboeet in Seretut Ward, Belgut constituency, on Thursday of last week and had been buried on Friday.
The Seretut family’s representative, Julius Ruto, stated that he voiced concerns that the body wasn’t their uncle, Joel Kipngeny Chumo, 95, when it was being prepared for burial last Thursday.
Ruto said he defied the mortuary attendant after making an effort to explain to him and threatened to imprison him at the morgue if he did not agree to take the body.
He admitted that others of his clan who had been together to retrieve the body had concurred that it was their relative, forcing him to surrender even if he wasn’t satisfied.
When Ruto received a call informing him that the wrong body had been taken for burial, he claimed he was not shocked.
Franklin Bett, the hospital’s director, has apologized to the two families for the confusion.
Bett said the Seretut family appeared to have taken the body without proper scrutiny, adding that he discovered that the two old men were almost identical.
He said the mix-up was not malicious in any way and such an incident had not happened in the facility for the last 24 years in operation.
Bett said the hospital administration had reported the matter at Kericho police station and will file an affidavit in court on Wednesday to enable the family to exhume the already buried body.
“We have amicably resolved the matter and the hospital will assist the two families in burying their kin,” said the hospital director.