Detectives attached to the Zonal Intervention Squad, Zone 2 Command, Onikan, Lagos have arrested an herbalist in attempt to sell human parts.
The 48-year-old suspect, Ibukun Moses, was said to have been arrested in Igbokoda in Ondo State.
It was learnt that the victim, simply identified as Toyin, was brought to the herbalist’s house for treatment of undisclosed illness, but died there.
A police source said immediately the lady died, the herbalist contacted her family to come and take her for burial.
The source said due to financial constrain the family members decided to bury her in Igbokoda with the assistant of the herbalist who took them to a cemetery where she was buried.
After Toyin had been buried, the herbalist went back to the cemetery and exhumed her corpse and cut off her head, jaw, the two hands and some other vital organs.
It was also gathered that when the victim family members went back to Igbokoda a week after she was buried to pray for the repose of her soul at the cemetery, it was then they discovered that her tomb had been tampered with and the matter was immediately reported to the ZIS office at Obada-Oko area of Ogun State.
Immediately, the matter was reported the herbalist was arrested in his shrine at Igbokoda, but denied knowing anything about the incident.
During interrogation, the herbalist later confessed to the police that he exhumed the corpse of the lady in order to sell her body parts to his co-herbalists who might want to use it.
He said: “As an herbalist, I also own a farm where I plant cassava, but the cassava is not yet mature for harvest.
“I needed money to buy foodstuff for my family, but when customers were not patronizing me, which was why I went to the cemetery to exhumed the corpse of the lady and sell her body parts so as to raise money.”
The herbalist was quoted to have said: “The only way for him to survive is to exhume the remain of the lady and sell her body parts.”
Moses added that he never knew that police would come after him because his thought was that nobody saw him in the dead of the night when he was carrying out the operation.
Confirming the story, the Zonal Police Public Relations Officer, CSP Dolapo Badmos, said the case is under investigation.
Badmos said: “The Assistant Inspector General of Police, Mr. Lawal Shehu, has directed that the case should be investigated and ensure that no stone should be left unturned for adequate prosecution of the suspect.”