The Independent Policing Oversight Authority is investigating claims a police officer in Busia raped a girl he arrested in Teso South subcounty on May 31.
Teso South subcounty police commander Isaac Kimwele told the Star on the phone on Monday the agency mandated to oversight the work of the police picked samples from the 21-year-old woman claiming to have been raped. The agency is waiting for medical examination results.
Ipoa, Kimwele said, is set to pick samples from officers who were on patrol that night to facilitate DNA testing.
“As we talk the case is now with Ipoa. The lady has been taken for medical examination, which is a very key step in the investigation, and we are waiting for the outcome. We also have officers who are supposed to be taken for medical examination so that their samples can be compared with the deposits that were found in the lady,” Kimwele said.
“If it happens that it is them (officers) who are culpable, then they will have to carry their own cross.”
The tests, he said, are being undertaken in Kisumu.
The subcounty police boss spoke after Teso South MP Mary Emase called for action against the officer said to be responsible.
Emase, who visited the victim at their Amaase village home, said it was unfortunate that police officers who are expected to secure the lives of Kenyans and their property engage in acts punishable by law.
“I requested for an Administration Police camp to be established at Aterait because of insecurity and I constructed the AP camp using NG-CDF money and they posted the officers. Their work was purely to provide security to area residents and their property,” Emase said.
“But what is shocking is the same officers expected to provide security are the ones raping our girls.”
The woman, according to the MP, is said to have been told by the officer who was in company of a colleague that she had been arrested without specifying the offence she had committed.
The officers are alleged to have visited the woman’s home in search of chang'aa, which was not found.
The officers, after the arrest, are claimed to have told the woman to walk with them to the main road – a few metres away where a police patrol vehicle had been parked.
“At the road, there was no Landcruiser as she had been told. They ordered her to walk with them up to Ong’aroi before the woman was ordered to stop when they reached a bushy area and the officer instructed her to undress,” the MP said.
“When the girl declined, she was slapped by the officer before being wrestled to the ground and raped.”
The girl said after the sexual act, the officer ordered her to dress up and leave.
Emase said there is another report on rape implicating the same officer at Aterait.
“I have another account that implicates the same officer with another incident at Aterait where the same officer defiled a girl. The incident almost made the girl to commit suicide but that case was killed,” the MP said.
“There is another case at Kemodo where some officers went to arrest people who were drinking chang'aa and one woman was raped during the raid. And it is said it is the same officer. I want to talk directly to our Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki: Crack the whip and reign on Adungosi and Aterait police stations.”
Kimwele called for calm as Ipoa concludes investigations into the rape claims.
