A Kenyan court on Tuesday said starvation cult leader and self-proclaimed pastor Paul Mackenzie Nthenge and 29 of his associates were facing 191 counts of child murder.

Prosecutors claim Nthenge ordered his followers to starve themselves and their children to death, claiming that this would ensure they would go to heaven before the end of the world.

What happened to the cult members?

In April last year, a man contacted the police saying his wife and daughter had gone to join Nthenge's commune in a remote part of Kenya but that they had not returned.

Police who entered the site found shallow graves and emaciated people who said they had been told to starve themselves so that they could "meet Jesus."

Over the next three weeks, investigators found more shallow graves with bodies, many of them children, as well as survivors.

Nthenge was said to have hired criminals with weapons to stop or kill anyone who changed their mind about starving to death.

Most of the 429 victims who were found had starved to death but some appeared to have been beaten, strangled, and suffocated.

The case has been dubbed the Shakahola Forest Massacre and it has led the government to seek a tightening of regulations about fringe religious groups. Kenya, a largely Christian country, has struggled to address criminal activity linked to small churches and cults.

What more do we know about the cult?

Nthenge, who was arrested last April, founded what he dubbed his "Good News International Ministries" in 2003 and gathered a large number of followers by claiming that he could speak directly to God.

He came under heavy scrutiny in the late 2010s and, alongside his wife, faced several charges relating to the internal practices of the church. 

Nthenge was chastised for encouraging followers to stop their children from going to school, which he said was ungodly. He also forbade them from going to hospital, saying such places were Satanic. Several children died as a result and 93 minors were rescued from the group in 2017. 

In 2019, Mackenzie was also accused of involvement in the deaths of two children believed to have been starved, suffocated, and buried in a shallow grave.

rc/msh (Reuters, AFP)