Chaos and violence erupted in Lugulu area in Butula Sub-County that saw a whole Administration Police camp and a villager’s homestead torched and razed to the ground by irate boda boda operatives and villagers.
They irate villagers and operatives who raided Malambisia AP camp at Malambisia market were baying fot the blood of three AP officers who had been involved in the torture of the late Boda Boda. The officers in the entire camp fled for their lives and escaped into local forests.
It forced the officers at Malambisia to call for reinforcement from Nambale and Butula to disperse members of the public and remove the body of the suspect from a room he died in allegedly due to torture.
That is when the real battle begun as Police officers engaged members of the public in running battles for several hours on the fateful Saturday morning after administration police attached to Malambisia AP camp were accused of killing a suspect from the area.
Malsham Wafula, 20, a bodaboda operator was arrested at 4am Saturday morning by three police officers who were accompanied by a man accusing him of having a love affair with his daughter.
His family members say they followed Wafula who was arrested naked pleading to give him clothes to wear but were chased away by the officers who started beating him while inside the homestead.
A close relative whose name cannot be disclosed for his own security said: “In the morning we went the Malambisia camp to give him clothes because they took him away when he was totally naked but the officers told us that we could not see him.”
Later in the morning they discovered that he had died while handcuffed on the window of a room with a curtain wrapped around his neck to suggest that he had hanged himself.
This immediately brings into memory a key suspect in the shooting of former Garissa Deputy Governor who was found hanging dead in the police cells toilets at Praklands/Pagani Police station.
“How could he hang himself when he had been handcuffed?,” the relative posed
It’s then that alarm was raised attracting members of the pubic who went to the camp and thwarted efforts by the police officers at the camp to remove the body.
Reinforcement from Nambale and Butula enabled the officers to remove the body and evacuate the armory and a few of their belongings before they sped off leaving members of the public with wrath which they directed on the house the officers were living in, setting it ablaze.
They then went to the home of the man who had accused the late boda boda operator of moving with his daughter leading to his arrest, and razed down all his five houses, two grass thatched and three iron sheet houses.
The locals have decried of increased insecurity in the area despite the camp being there, and strongly condemned the current killing.
Another Elder said: “This area has become very insecure. We have police officers here but the only thing they are good at is harassing us and collecting money from women who brew chang’aa but when you raise them when you have been attacked they don’t respond.”
Recently a watchman was killed by unknown people at Elugulu market a few meters from here but so far nobody has been arrested in connection to the killing,
“We call upon the national government to come on the ground and investigate these incidences and bring to book those found guilty,” the Elder said
