58 bodies discovered during cult investigation of Kenyan pastor who allegedly told followers to fast to death in order to

More than 50 bodies have been found so far on land owned by a pastor in coastal Kenya who was arrested for telling his followers to fast to death. Authorities had recovered at least 58 bodies from mass graves, Reuters reported Monday, citing the country’s police chief.

Malindi sub-county police chief John Kemboi said that more shallow graves have yet to be dug up on the land belonging to pastor Paul Makenzi, who was arrested on April 14 over links to cultism.

At least four people died after they and others were discovered starving at the Good News International Church last week.

Police have asked a court to allow them to hold Makenzi longer as investigations into the deaths of his followers continue.

A tipoff from members of the public led police to raid the pastor’s property in Malindi, where they found 15 emaciated people, including the four who later died. The followers said they were starving on the pastor’s instructions in order to “meet Jesus.”

The exhumed bodies of victims of a religious cult are laid out in the village of Shakahola, near the coastal city of Malindi, in southern Kenya Sunday, April 23, 2023. 

/ AP


Police had been told there were dozens of shallow graves spread across Makenzi’s farm and digging started on Friday.

Makenzi was on a hunger strike for the past four days while in police custody. He has since been released on bail of 100,000 Kenyan shillings ($700).

The pastor has been arrested twice before, in 2019 and in March of this year, in relation to the deaths of children. Each time, he was released on bond, and both cases are still proceeding through the court.

Local politicians have urged the court not to release him this time, decrying the spread of cults in the Malindi area.

Cults are common in Kenya, which has a largely religious society.

The grim case has gripped national attention and the government has flagged the need for tighter control of religious denominations in a country where rogue pastors and fringe movements have been involved in crime.

Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki, who has announced he would visit the site on Tuesday, described the case as “the clearest abuse of the constitutionally enshrined human right to freedom of worship”.

But attempts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as attempts to undermine constitutional guarantees for a division between church and state.

Last year, the body of a British woman who died at the house of a different cult leader while on holiday in Kenya was exhumed, the family’s lawyer said. Luftunisa Kwandwalla, 44, was visiting the coastal city of Mombasa when she died in August 2020, and was buried a day later, but her family has claimed foul play.

AFP contributed to this report.

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