The investigations revealed a damning disconnect between the County Government and police with regards to how the bodies that are retrieved are handled.
While the county maintains that a total of 16 bodies have been retrieved from the river since the inception of the Ng’arisha Jiji programme, police insist they have no data to prove the same.
The Star explored the slum and interviewed several youths put in charge of the clean-up exercise.
One of them said the body recoveries have had a devastating impact on them.
According to him, the bodies retrieved are badly mutilated, some with gun shots, others with stab wounds while others have been cut into pieces and covered in bags.
“We wouldn’t want to assume it is a matter of drunkenness and drowning because some of the bodies that we find them with ropes tied around their neck, arms and feet. This could be cases where people are killed and in efforts to conceal the murder are dumped in the river,” he said.
He said for the fetuses it could be a result of the marooning backstreet clinics that have no other place to dump the bodies.
“The bodies are usually in bad state, others already decomposed because this river is mixed with very many chemicals. As a result the bodies are not easily recognised and the police always pick them up from there,” the youth said.
They said though police and Nema have completely abandoned the cleaning exercise, every time they find a body, they have to inform the police, who collect them for further processing.
This claim has however been dismissed by police who told the Star they have no data indicating that bodies had been retrieved from the river.
Nairobi Regional Police boss Philip Ndolo said the county had not reported any incident to them since they started the exercise.
“I am not in a position to give you the information that you are seeking because we have not been told of such bodies,” Ndolo said.
According to Ndolo if a body is retrieved from the river then that becomes a police case.
He said it is only the police who are mandated to process the body for identification.
“Whether the deceased has relatives or is unidentified, that is a police case. The matter is supposed to be reported to the nearest police station, where the officers will arrive at the scene, take photos, record an OB number and transport the body to the City Mortuary where it is processed,” he said.
“After identification, the police will circulate the information to ascertain whether it is a missing person or not.”
He added, “the standard procedure is even if you find someone’s leg or hand, you don’t proceed to burry, rather police must be called to take the part to mortuary for processing,” he said.
Ndolo said he visited Sonko’s office after it was reported that several fetuses had been buried along the river.
“We had a detailed conversation with the governor and agreed that an official report be made with the police. Since then we have not seen any report,” he said.
To ascertain these claims, the Star visited the Kariobangi Police Station where the cleaners said the officers who collect the bodies are stationed.
One of the directors told us that since most of the bodies had been retrieved within the Korogocho area, they contacted the officers from Kariobangi which is the nearest station.
Other stations that had received the bodies are Embakasi, Mukuru and Kware police stations respectively.
For instance one body with the OB number 18/11/7/2019 is said to have been registered at the Kware Police Station.
But a senior officer at the Station who sought anonymity said the officers had not collected such bodies from the river.
According to him, there was no record of even a single OB number at the station indicating that a body had been collected from the river.
This is despite the fact that Sonko’s team had shown us photos of a police van around the river collecting the latest body that had been retrieved.
“We are the junior offers on the ground. The information that you get from the Regional Commander originates from us here. I have been here for a while and can confirm that we have not collected any bodies from the river,” the officer said.
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