Caroline Mwatha’s father Stanslaus Mbai on Friday said he was dissatisfied with the postmortem that showed the activist died from excessive bleeding.
Chief government pathologist Johansen Oduor supervised the postmortem examination at Umash Funeral Home on Thursday.
It was witnessed by independent pathologist Peter Ndegwa who was nominated by activists.
Ndegwa said Caroline died of excessive bleeding caused by “an abortion”. Sources told the Star there was male foetus in Caroline’s womb. It was dismembered.
Mbai, however told the Star he was “not satisfied by the autopsy result”. He said it is hard to explain the verdict that her daughter was pregnant and that she would resort to an abortion procedure in a backstreet clinic.
“It is hard to believe this, given that I have seen Caro all this while and had not noted the pregnancy,” Mbai said.
Haki Africa executive director Hussein Khalid said civil society groups accepted that Mwatha died of excessive bleeding but “the autopsy alone is not satisfactory.”
He said it was possible that someone offended by Caroline’s work, and who knew a her condition, could have taken advantage of it (condition) to kill her.
“We need to establish whether or not she consented to the abortion procedure,” Khalid said.
The activist camped at City Mortuary throughout the week and witnessed the postmortem.
“The fact that the uterus was perforated and the foetus slipped into the abdomen could point to a rudimentary procedure. Was this done with her agreement or someone forced her?,” he said.
An activist who declined to be named for fear of reprisal said human rights crusaders could not acceptthe postmortem examination to explain Caroline’s death. “The human rights sector has a deep mistrust of the state. It is not possible to take their words for it.”
Khalid supported the claim, saying the text messages that have been circulated were suspicious.
“The messages purporting to show the correspondences between Caroline cannot be trusted because they do not even show the phone numbers.
“The state is the only one with access to people’s phones. They can even generate text messages and claim it is between me and you,” Khalid said.