NPS refutes reports that Ibrahim Hilal was abducted
Mr Ibrahim Hilal Mwiti.
The National Police Service has issued a report detailing how 24-year-old Ibrahim Hilal, who went missing last November only for his body to turn up at a morgue this week, died.
In it, the Service has strongly denied claims that Hilal was abducted as has been widely shared on social media, and clarified that he was found dead on the night of November 12, 2024, by Juja traffic police after a car knocked him down in a hit-and-run accident.
Police on Sunday said that the 24-year-old was last seen alive on November 11, 2024, and was reported missing by his mother, Sadhiya Iman, at Kamukunji Police Station four days later. She also filed another missing-person report at Juja Police Station on November 18, 2024.
When preliminary inquiries and a search for Hilal yielded no fruit, a missing-person circulation, referencing the initial missing person report made earlier on, was done on November 22, 2024, by Juja Police Station.
“His body had been discovered on November 12 past midnight by Juja traffic police after he was knocked down by a hit-and-run vehicle while riding a hired motorcycle at Spur Mall area along Thika Superhighway,” police said.
Traffic officers who took the body to the morgue noted that it had visible head injuries. The body was registered as unknown due to lack of identification documents at the accident scene, and the motorcycle secured at Juja Traffic Office.
Body identified in November
To establish identity, his fingerprints were taken by police and submitted to the National Registration Bureau and the results, dated on November 21, 2024, positively identified him as Ibrahim Hilal Mwiti.
It, however, remains unclear why the police did not alert the family that his body had been found as the family had already filed a missing person report by then.
It took another six weeks before his family identified the body at Thika Level Five Hospital Mortuary. This is after they made the painful decision to start visiting morgues in Nairobi and its environs.
The police, in their statement, say the family declined a post-mortem.
“On January 2, 2025, Ibrahim’s mother swore an affidavit before Thika Law Courts requesting the waiver of a post-mortem examination in accordance with her religious belief and subsequently sought the release of the body which was granted by the court,” police said.
Mourners at Langata Cemetery during the burial of Ibrahim Hilal Mwiti on January 3, 2025.
During her son’s burial at Lang’ata Cemetery last Friday (January 3), Iman told Nation.Africa that they had found the body the previous day and that she personally did not allow the police to conduct an autopsy due to her Islamic beliefs.
She also said that her son had been booked at the mortuary as an unknown, with the cause of death being a hit-and-run accident.
Iman, police said, recorded a formal statement a day after her son’s burial and stated that her son was not an activist.
