Five members of Ndenemu family in Umuatuegwu Okija, Ihiala Local Government Area of Anambra State, on Tuesday died mysteriously after eating a meal of rice.

The victims include a commercial motorcycle operator, Albert Ndenemenu, his wife, Nwanne who was the last to die and their three children.

Though reports on the cause of their death have been sketchy, the general story has it that they died as a result of food poison while others said it was the handiwork of fetish relations of the diseased family.

The Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, for the Anambra State command, Mrs. Nkiru Nwode who confirmed the incident said while they are awaiting he autopsy, investigations were continuing.

An eye witness account from Umuatuegwu Okija said that Mrs. Nnwanne Ndenemu, who was the last to die, prepared rice for the family’s lunch, which all of them ate and shortly after, her husband and her children started vomiting blood.

“When many people in the village rushed into their compound following her alarm, it was discovered that they were already dead.

“The woman, on seeing the lifeless bodies of her husband and children, collapsed and was taken to Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital (NAUTH) Nnewi where she too died.”

An indigene of the area, Sir Ignatius Okonkwo, who spoke to journalists, said that the cause of death of the five persons was yet to be ascertained even though food poisoning has been fingered.

He said that efforts made to prevail on the authorities of NAUTH, where the bodies were first deposited to conduct an autopsy on the dead persons failed.

One of the late family’s in law, who was among the early callers was said to have taken the bodies to mortuary, but when stories started making the rounds that they might have been poisoned, he brought back the five dead bodies to their house where they were lined up in the open for several hours before some members of the family decided to return them to the mortuary.

It was however gathered that three distant relations of the diseased family were yesterday invited by the police at the Okija police station where they are being interrogated.