NAIROBI- Tanzanian police said Saturday that they had arrested two morgue employees in Dar es Salaam after they admitted to cutting open a dead man’s corpse and stealing the drugs hidden in his stomach.
“The two morgue workers admitted to cutting open the body” a week ago to take the drugs, local police official SiMaid in a statement, adding that the dead man had died of an overdose.
Drug traffickers regularly employ drug “mules” to transport merchandise by stuffing the drugs in small airtight bags which are then swallowed or inserted in someone’s stomach.But the technique is hardly foolproof as the bags can be eaten away by stomach acid and cause an overdose-which is what may have happened to the dead man.
The man, a Ghanaian national, was found dead in a hotel room in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s economic capital, and transported to the morgue at Mwananyamala hospital, where the two employees worked, Sirro said. According to police, the workers said they then sold the 32 drug capsules to an unidentified businessman.
, who in turn sold the merchandise to Ally Nyundo, a suspected drug trafficker.
Those two men were also arrested, police said, without identifying the drugs.