Bones found in shallow graves in Central Village – again
Published:Wednesday | January 31, 2024 | 12:10 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
Sections of the gritty community of Zambia in Central Village, St Catherine, have earned the tag of an unofficial burial ground, a concern for some residents as the security forces constantly unearth shallow graves with human remains.
An excavation process, which required the services of scene of crime investigators using hard tools such as pickaxes, shovels, sieves and machetes in a heavily vegetated area, began early yesterday and went late into the afternoon.
At 1 p.m., when The Gleaner arrived at the scene, human remains had been found in two shallow graves, a third had not yet been dug up.
Investigators told The Gleaner that on this occasion, they were in the community on an intelligence-driven operation searching for gunmen and illegal weapons when they stumbled upon the graves.
“Right now, you can’t tell nobody say over here a nuh human burial ground. Every minute so? No, man. Is like if you here say anybody missing, people affi come look over here. If you see a ordinary man a dig, if a even farm him a farm, you a go think and look. You affi ask yourself, ‘What him a plant?’,” a resident told The Gleaner in whisper.
The area of Zambia, where the police cordoned and centred their excavation, has a plethora of abandoned homes at different stages of construction.
A senior officer told The Gleaner that it would take some amount of forensic science to determine the sex, how many, and possibly how long the body or bodies were buried.
Yearly, the country reports several persons missing, some of whom are never found or accounted for.
Exhumation is nothing new to different sites in the Central Village community.
Residents have expressed in the past that they are fearful of commenting on the issue publicly.
On Tuesday, many stood at their gates simply watching as police service vehicles and the media traversing the space.
A young boy, not yet a teen, placed a chair at his gate and positioned himself using his cell phone to capture the happenings.
On April 9, 2022, residents were perplexed by an odour and the sighting of turkey vultures in an area of Zambia.
The authorities were summoned and, on their arrival, they discovered human remains spread across three properties, some wrapped in plastic.
At one point, dogs, which did their fair share of exhuming, ran around eating flesh from what turned out to be human bones.
The residents said then that they had been bothered by the mystery odour for at least two days.
The bulk of the remains were found in a vegetated open lot, near a sign that said ‘Welcome to Zambia’.
The police say their investigation into yesterday’s gruesome find is ongoing.