Two top police commanders flew back to the Coast over Kilifi’s Shakahola forest where there is ongoing exhumation of bodies from shallow graves amid a planned operation in the area.
Officials said the Deputy Inspector General of Kenya Police Douglas Kanja and Director of Criminal Investigations Mohamed Amin who arrived in the region on Thursday will oversee a planned operation on new cult centres that have been discovered.
They cited one found in Kwale where more than 100 people were found in a makeshift church praying.
They are under probe for the new cult.
There are fears of more centres in the area where unsuspecting followers have been radicalized.
The officials also visited the personnel overseeing the exhumation to get a brief on the progress and in particular the planned charges they plan to level on suspects in custody.
Coast Regional Commissioner Rhoda Onyancha said they Thursday recovered five more bodies from the shallow graves in the forest.
This increased to 150, the number of bodies so far recovered in the area.
The teams also rescued two men while praying and fasting in the forest.
There are 594 people reported missing so far and 14 of them have been reunited with their families after being rescued from starving to death.
Twenty-five new arrests were made on Thursday in connection with the cult led by pastor Paul Mackenzie.
The teams have taken 93 DNA samples for analysis to help families identify their missing kin.
Police have identified 20 new gravesites which they are working on.
The government has sent a 30-day cancellation notice to the New Life Church of Pastor Ezekiel Odero and Good News International ministries of Mackenzie, Registrar of Societies Jane Joram told the Senate Ad hoc committee investigating the Shakahola deaths.
The two churches have been under investigation for the Shakahola cult in which more than 100 people starved themselves so they could go to heaven.
Others, post-mortems revealed, were strangled and suffocated.
They were all buried in mass graves.
It is believed more of the cults are in the Coast region.
Mackenzie and his co-accused are facing serious crimes of murder, counselling and aiding persons to kill themselves, aiding suicide, abduction, radicalisation, genocide, crimes against humanity, child cruelty, fraud and money laundering.
The second phase of the exhumation exercise started Tuesday with Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki presiding over the process, which he described as a legal, medical, and human rights exercise that must be undertaken methodically and carefully to protect the dignity and privacy of families of the deceased persons.
Kindiki said the investigation team is closing in on level two and level three perpetrators who aided the cult leader Mackenzie to execute the heinous atrocity.
The entire 50,000-acre Chakama ranch remains a security area and scene of the crime with limited access for all persons who are unauthorised.
Dozens more bodies are believed to be buried in shallow graves therein.
Mackenzie, who is in police custody, is being investigated for influencing his followers to starve to death in order to meet their maker.
Police also suspect that some of the victims did not starve to death and may have been killed and then buried on the property.
He has denied wrongdoing but has been refused bail. He insists that he shut down his church in 2019.
The followers say he told them to starve themselves in order to “meet Jesus“.
