Family protests kin's lynching near police station
Mutsunga Chiguta Mtsunga aged 60 years and Monje Mudzo Nzaka aged 52 years were discovered dead outside their homestead.
The family of a 29-year-old man who was lynched outside a church near a police station has written to the police Internal Affairs Unit and the Independent Policing Oversight Authority accusing some officers of participating in the murder.
Mr John Irungu was rounded up by a rowdy mob at Kanyumbani Estate, Maragua town, beaten senseless outside Redeemed Gospel Church and set ablaze after his head was crushed with a huge stone.
In the letter, the family says he was murdered on May 31, some 200 metres from the Maragua Police Station “and we are privy to information that two police officers passed by, briefly witnessed the torture [of] our son … [but] ignored his distress calls and moved on, promising to return to collect the body".
The letter adds that "true to the promise that trashes police's sworn duty to serve all without discrimination, they returned to the scene after his body had been charred by the murderous fire".
The family wants the station commander, the two male officers and members of the public known to have taken part in the murder to be treated as murder suspects.
The letter explains that "Irungu was first beaten until he became unconscious, doused with paraffin and set ablaze, the heat and the pain making him regain consciousness but someone from the mob hit him with a building rock on his head, driving him back to unconsciousness and eventual death”.
“This is a self-explanatory premeditated plot to murder," the family said.
On Thursday, Murang'a South Police Commander Alexander Shikondi said the incident happened "but not in the version explained in the letter, though it will be subject to investigations".
He said the case was purely a matter of mob injustice "and we have no record whatsoever filed officially to complain against any of our officers being party to the killing".
He said the incident was reported by the area assistant chief, who said that the "body of a male adult was found burnt by an irate mob after he was caught attempting to break into a rental house at around 6am".
Mr Shikondi said the Maragua Police Station commander, an officer from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and scene of crime investigators visited the scene, secured it and the body was removed to a mortuary.
He added that residents said they were not familiar with the dead man and none reported knowing what had happened.
"We took the body that had severe burns all over it ... took it to a mortuary and marked his case as pending … investigations. We will appreciate if the family can help us get to the bottom of the death and if there were eyewitnesses, they can come forward and help us get to the people who executed the injustice," he said.
Some residents tipped off the Nation the man had three months earlier escaped lynching at the same spot where he died.
Maragua Residents and Business Community Association (MRBCA) coordinator Mohammed Omar Maluki described the incident as "food for thought".
He urged police officers to take stock of the incident and ask themselves why residents opted to take the law into their own hands "near a police station instead of turning him in".
He added that killing a person outside a church was not the best of decisions the mob could have make.
He said the town has had to deal with cases of violent attacks, break-ins and robberies over the past few months and residents will be urged to report suspects to police instead of lynching them.
