•The numbers show a steep rise in the alleged extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances this year compared to 2020.
Image: SHABAN OMAR
At least 163 people have been killed by the police or disappeared in 2021, data by a police monitoring lobby has shown.
According to Missing voices, a data site maintained by a host of human rights groups including Amnesty International and IJM, the statistics cover up to October this year.
Those whose deaths are attributed to police action were 139 while 24 people were allegedly abducted by the security agents and their whereabouts are yet to be traced.
The numbers show a steep rise in the alleged extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances this year compared to 2020.
As of October last year, the site recorded a total of 131 cases. For the whole year, 2020 saw 167 deaths and enforced disappearances.
The site breaks down the 2021 numbers as follows: January saw alleged seven police killings as a result of seven separate incidents.
February had nine cases of police killings and one enforced disappearance as a result of eight separate incidents.
March had 13 cases of police killings and two enforced disappearances as a result of six separate incidents.
April saw cases of police killings as a result of 5 separate incidents recorded while May had 22 deaths as a result of 13 separate incidents.
They also recorded 17 killings and four enforced disappearances as a result of 16 incidents in the month of June.
July had 20 cases of police killings with three cases of enforced disappearances as a result of 15 separate incidents.
For August, the site shows that 22 people were killed and one person suffered enforced disappearance. September had eight cases of extrajudicial killings as a result of 6 incidents.
Finally in October, 22 cases of alleged police killing were recorded by the site with two people reported disappearing as a result of 20 incidents.
Apart from the ten months, whose data the site has published, November and December have also seen some cases of killings and disappearances allegedly linked to the police reported.
For example, Mwinyi Mwinyi, a 41 years old father of four was picked up from his Utange home in Mombasa by four men believed to be anti-terror police officers on December 20.
His alleged abductors were armed and were using a black Subaru car in which he was bundled into and sped off.
He is yet to be found and searches for him in morgues, police stations and hospital wards have not yielded the desired result.
Efforts to get police spokesman Brunoh Shioso did not succeed. However, the police have consistently refuted the statistics generated by the lobbies as biased and not representing reality.
The service has maintained that the number does not specify the circumstances of the alleged police killings.