SIMON MUNTEMBA writes
POLICE in Mansa have arrested an 18-year-old youth who was found with a baby corpse he exhumed from a local cemetery in suspected ritual.
The youth escaped instant lynching as the resident this time around decided to allow the law deal with him.
A number of people have been brutally battered and burnt alive in Mansa in the past after being suspected of engaging in death-related rituals.
Police public relations officer Esther Katongo said the suspect was from Kolala Farm in Chief Mabumba’s area.
Ms Katongo said the suspect was spotted by alert Namwandwe villagers around 16:00 hours at Mukanda graveyard with a hoe exhuming a dead body of a baby on June 6.
The residents mobilised themselves and apprehended the suspect whom they found holding the body of the dead baby.
Ms Katongo said the matter was reported to police by the incensed residents.
“Police in Mansa received a report of tampering with the dead and trespassing on a burial site in which Namwandwe villagers apprehended a male person who allegedly exhumed the body of a baby from the graveyard. This happened on June 6, 2019 at 16:00 hours,” Ms Katongo said.
She said when the police visited the scene, they found the young man holding the corpse wrapped in a baby blanket near the tampered grave.
“It was reported that villagers saw the suspect of Kolala Farm in Chief Mabumba’s area in Mansa District, at Mukanda graveyard, with a hoe exhuming a dead body,” she said,
Ms Katongo said when the residents mobilised themselves they went to inform the suspect’s father, who suspected his son to be mentally unstable.
She said after efforts to find the dead baby’s relatives failed police, with the help of villagers led by headman Paul Chitima of Mukanda Village, reburied the exhumed body.
Ms Katongo said police had detained the suspect and that arrangements were being made to subject him to a medical examination to determine his mental status.
