By Olive Ejang Tebug
Family members of a certain William Meliki of Mulango Street, Fiango, Kumba, who was found dead in his room recently, reportedly abandoned his corpse for five days with neighbours, saying he was a sorcerer.
According to reports, the deceased was renting a one-room plank house after his seven children sold his compound in Confidence Street and abandoned him to fend for himself.
A source also disclosed that a few years later, one of Meliki's daughters, Sylvia Meliki, visited him and discovered the late man in an ailing situation. It is said that instead of caring for the old man, the girl allegedly eloped with a man just 200 meters away from her father's house.
Neighbours told The Post that when Sylvia recently realised that her father had gone into a comma, she vanished and her father died a few days later. The story goes that when the neighbours tried to rally the children of the deceased in vain, they wrapped the corpse in a blanket and took it to Sylvia's boy friend's (names withheld) residence.
But it is said that he demanded that the corpse be taken away. After a heated argument, the neighbours and sympathisers abandoned the corpse in front of the man's house and left.
The Kumba police was alerted and they arrived at the scene immediately but the stench from the corpse drove them away. Our source said several phone calls finally brought Sylvia to the scene two days later. She is said to have claimed that all her family members refused to turn up to give their father their last respects.
Sylvia reportedly faulted the father for their misery. But Sylvia's story did not convince the neighbours, who pounced on her and beat her. And to everyone's surprise, Sylvia abandoned her father's corpse and fled.
The stunned then went to work. At 11 pm that day, they hired a taxi and ferried the corpse to the deceased's cultural meeting hall at Three Corners, Fiango. But the meeting members reportedly drove them away with the corpse, claiming he was not one of them.
The frustrated neighbours then took the corpse to a road junction at Mbo Street and abandoned it there.
Overwhelmed by the nauseating smell ensuing from the corpse, some people contributed FCFA 50,000 and paid some truck pushers who carried the corpse to the Apolinaire Street cemetery, dug a grave and buried the corpse. By press time, no family member had turned up to claim the corpse.
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