An amateur athlete arrested for allegedly impersonating a nurse at the Moi Referral Hospital has been put on her defence.
Shieyes Chepkosgey, 26, was on Tuesday charged with impersonation before Eldoret chief magistrate Charles Obulutsa.
Chepkosgey was arrested in a nurse's uniform in ward 14 on June 14. The former US-based athlete had presented herself as Pamela Mulupi, an intern, yet she had no relevant training.
At the Eldoret Women's Prison where she was taken after her arrest, she was found to be a man in a woman's clothes.
“The court has found that you have a case to answer,” Obulutsa told her after the prosecution said she had presented herself as a medical student from KMTC Mombasa branch.
The name on Chepkosgei's ID is Hillary Kiprotich.
The nurse in charge of ward 14 became suspicious after observing the way she handled patients and alerted the hospital's security officers, who did not find the name Malupi in the interns'register.
“Upon interrogation, we found that the name tag which the suspect was using was fake. All other documents the suspect gave were also fake,” security officer Cheruiyot Rotich told the court.
Chepkosgey was released on a Sh30,000 bail.
The suspect has filed a constitutional case at the High Court in Eldoret through lawyer Colbert Ojiambo seeking to be recognised as transgender and as such not to be held in a normal jail facility.
Women Prison superintendent Margaret Waithera asked the court not to order the suspect to be detained at her facility because the runner was a man.
The magistrate declined to oblige her as the case before him was that of impersonation.
In the transgender case, the accused argues she has a right to belong to a gender of her choice. She claims the MTRH subjected her to a medical test to determine her gender without her consent.
Chepkosgey has participated in a number of international athletics events as a woman.
“It is my right to associate myself with gender of my choice and nobody should force me to confess to belong to the gender that I am not comfortable with,” the petition in the court reads.
Audrey Mbugua, the chairperson of Transgender, Education and Advocacy organisation has been enjoined in the case. The organisation champions the rights of transgender people in Kenya.
The impersonation case continues on October 18.
