Police in Meru arrest man who 'tried' to chop off boy's genitals
Man in cuffs
Police in Kiutine, Igembe Central, Meru County, have arrested a key suspect in the attempted chopping off of a 16-year-old schoolboy’s manhood that left him with a serious wound in his thigh.
Area police boss Paul Odede said the boy, who was slashed with a sword, had positively identified the suspect, in his mid-20s, as the man who attacked him while four others pinned him to the ground.
The assault was reported to police days after it happened, when the wound had worsened.
The suspect told police that he assaulted the boy to punish him after he found him stealing mangoes from his farm.
But Mr Odede dismissed the claim as an afterthought as the assailant had not reported the alleged theft to police.
The boy was taken to hospital five days after the attack as the infection from the wound started spreading to his stomach.
Operated on
Mr James Mithika, who rescued the boy, said he had been operated on at Laare Maternity and Nursing Home and was responding well to treatment.
He said the wound would take one to three months to heal and would require grafting.
“I found him sleeping on the earthen floor of a small house and the condition was deplorable. He had lost a lot of blood and looked weak as he is epileptic,” he said.
The boy claimed he was approached by the man, whom he knows well, with the promise of casual work to harvest mangoes in their Baibariu village.
But on reaching the farm, the man, who was allegedly joined by four others, turned on him and started torturing him, threatening to severe his manhood and claiming that he was not circumcised.
In the January 8 incident, the boy said he pleaded with the attackers to set him free, telling them that he had undergone the rite of passage.
They forced him to the ground and stripped him. One of the youths put his arm around his neck to prevent him from raising the alarm.
‘Chop off’
But even after confirming that the boy had been circumcised, the attackers insisted that his manhood needed to be chopped off, and one of them prepared to do so.
The boy struggled to set himself free as the man who was about to cut off his manhood swung into action, missing the private parts but inflicting a deep cut in his leg.
His cries drew the attention of his mother, Beatrice Jevan, who went out to investigate and found her son on his knees as he pleaded with the men to spare his life.
