A typical village set up in Gusii. Property disputes are rife in the region. [Eric Abuga, Standard]

Several families in Kisii and Nyamira counties are entangled in property feuds emanating from inter-meddling and botched succession of various estates.

There are fears that most land and other property buyers stand to lose out on their material goods once such cases end up in court. In the melee, some families battling such court cases opt to immediately oxidise the body to thwart any possible exhumations, where people were buried in the disputed land.

They douse the corpses in sulphuric acid in midnight burials and leave quickly before complaints come with court injunctions. Should court orders be issued for exhumation, there are no coffins or bodies to exhume, and the opened graves are often toxic with fumes of sulphuric acid.

In using sulphuric acid, everything that can be oxidised, including flesh, bones, wood, metal parts of the coffin, and minerals in the soil, will have been oxidised into a mushy, black mix of carbon and metallic salts.

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