The family of a British woman who joined a cult during the Covid pandemic where she was allegedly murdered, have won the battle for her body to undergo a post-mortem amid ongoing questions about her death.
Lutfunisa Kwandwalla travelled from her home in Leicester to Kenya in 2019 to visit members of her husband’s family.
But the 44-year-old became trapped there when Covid swept the world, plunging countries into lockdown and halting air travel.
According to her family the Brit became a member of a cult during her time there, where they claim she was murdered.
Lutfunisa was found dead at the home of so-called spiritual leader, Arif Mohamed Iqbal, in Kenya’s eastern coastal city of Mombasa in 2020.
Officials claimed she had died from natural causes and no investigation was launched into her death, with no arrests made.
But now her distraught family have won a court battle to force Kenyan authorities to dig up Lutfunisa’s body and perform a post-mortem to investigate claims she was killed.
Lutfunisa’s brother, Imran Admani told The BBC : “The court order is a victory for justice - it was touch and go.
“It was an emotional moment as well as a moment of joy.”
Lutfunisa’s family claim she was killed by cult members who then rushed through her burial to try and hide evidence of her murder - such was the speed of it that none of her family were able to attend the funeral.
They hope the post-mortem will reveal evidence she was killed.
Imran said: “The next stage to establish if it was foul play is to get to the body. Hopefully very soon we will get to know what happened to her.”
Her death would not be the first linked to cultism in Kenya.
In October 2019, the Directorate of Criminal Investigations announced it was looking into two deaths it had attributed to extreme groups.
In the same month, a Catholic priest was found buried in a shallow grave in eastern Kenya. Materials belonging to a secret cult were discovered in the suspected killer’s house, it was reported.
Police also linked the death of the son of a prominent University of Nairobi lecturer Hannah Khahugani Inyama to another dangerous cult.
