A badly decomposed body of a middle aged woman and child were discovered by the public last week in Tati Siding Village, 15 km from Francistown.
Station Commander of Gerald Police Station, Motsholathebe Mothibi, told Sunday Standard in a telephone interview that on the morning of Wednesday last week, there was reported an incident in which a woman was found by a member of the public in the river.
Mothibi said that upon arrival at the scene, they found the body of a woman who was in a decomposed state.
“As we continued to try and establish what might have caused the death of the woman, we found some of her items a little distance away from the body, and discovered a bag,” Mothibi stated.
He mentioned that when they opened the bag they found that it contained baby items, including a bottle of powdered milk. He added that after discovering the body they suspected that the deceased must have been a mother or perhaps the baby could be nearby. Mothibi indicated that as they continued surveying the scene, they discovered that something was buried in the sand. They dug and found a baby wrapped in a plastic bag and buried in a shallow grave.
“The baby was also in a badly decomposed state,” said Mothibi.
Mothibi went on to explain that as they continued to try and establish the cause of the death of the two, they found the deceased documents a distance away from the body and, luckily, they located her parents in Monarch location in Francistown.
The police at this stage cannot establish if the deceased was murdered or if she committed suicide because the investigations are in their initial stages.
Mothibi also mentioned that such kinds of incidents were becoming worrisome, because recently in Tutume, in the Central District another decomposed body of a man was exhumed from a shallow grave.
However, Sunday Standard received information from members of the public in Tati Siding who reported the incident to the Police.
“As I panicked and drew myself closer to the scene I discovered that the woman seemed to have hanged herself but it was bizarre because she was naked and her other leg was tied to her neck,” he said.
He went on to state that there were clothes everywhere, and at that moment he immediately rushed to the village customary court where the police were then summoned.
Another member of the public also revealed that she went to see the horrific scene and discovered that there were signs of knife marks on the lower part of the body and there was a bottle of alcohol near the body.
“I think the woman and the baby could have been murdered on Saturday night, perhaps after entertainment from the bars,” she added.
She also mentioned that the murderer could have staged the whole scene to mislead police investigations.
