When a young woman walked into Theta Police Station in Juja, Kiambu County, on October 10, 2025 to report a rape incident, she was hopeful that investigators would get her justice.
She had every reason to hope for justice as two men, after raping her, ordered the young woman to send money to an M-Pesa till number.
At first, the case stalled even before investigations started. Police officers neither took the victim’s statement, nor visited the scene of the crime.
Activist Boniface Mwangi later visited the police station in the company of colleagues and held a brief meeting with the commanding officer. An officer of the rank of inspector was assigned the case, and the investigation took off.
Human rights activist Boniface Mwangi gestures during an interview at Mageuzi Hub on September 16, 2025.
Photo credit: Francis Nderitu | Nation Media Group
The inspector’s application in the Chief Magistrate’s Court for permission to get details of the person to whom the M-Pesa till number is registered was successful.
Finally, there was hope of tracing the perpetrators with that information.
But in January, before the inspector could contact or pay a visit to the person behind the till number, she was arrested by officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Serious Crimes Unit.
The DCI informed the inspector that she was under investigation for colluding with Mr Mwangi to plan protests with the intention of “causing malicious damage to property and causing actual bodily harm” to unnamed individuals.
On January 26, the inspector willingly surrendered her mobile phone with two Sim cards, and her laptop for analysis at the DCI’s Sh4 billion forensic laboratory on Kiambu road, and signed a consent form allowing that process to be conducted.
Four days later, the DCI filed an application in court for legal permission to analyse the gadgets as part of the investigations into the police officer.
As the DCI investigated the inspector for alleged protest planning, another woman was attacked, raped and robbed in the same place as the first one.
Both women reported they were attacked at Murera, Juja. The rapists then stole money from their mobile wallets. They have submitted their M-Pesa statements to police.
The criminals forced both victims to send cash to a till number that was traced to a bar in Kimbo. The second victim was also forced to transfer cash to a mobile number whose registration details are being investigated.
Earlier in court, the DCI had obtained orders allowing it access to the Theta Police Station officer’s phone to analyse virtually everything, including social media platforms and private messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram.
A family spokesperson for the second complainant said that police at the station were reluctant to handle the case after their senior was arrested.
Photo credit: Shutterstock
“An order is hereby issued authorising the analysis and preservation of all data, including but not limited to: IMEI history; device types, models, serial numbers, IP and MAC addresses; text messages; call logs; GPS/location history; email history and logs; WhatsApp history, messages and logs; Telegram history, messages and logs; Signal chats, multimedia files, social media applications history, messages and logs; and cloud backups from the aforesaid devices, covering the period under investigations,” one of the orders issued by the Milimani Chief Magistrate’s Court dated January 30 reads.
The DCI had told the court that its officers had prepared a report that indicated that the inspector was part of a group planning protests. The protests in question, the documents indicated, were for the second anniversary of the June, 2024 youth-led demonstrations.
The inspector was questioned at least five times by DCI officers in relation to the alleged protest planning. On all those occasions and in her recorded statements seen by the Nation, she denied the accusations.
After being released, the inspector opted out of investigating the rape case.
Other officers at the police station, being aware of what the inspector had gone through, also opted not to get involved in that investigation.
Multiple officers at the station told the Nation, on condition of anonymity, that the DCI’s Juja office has also refused to take up the investigation over the same fears.
“We are waiting for directions from our bosses on how the two matters will be dealt with", one officer said.
A family spokesperson for the second complainant said that police at the station were reluctant to handle the case after their senior was arrested.
“We have been in and out of the police station for the last two months but we are yet to get any help,” the spokesperson said.
The family member who requested anonymity said the victim had submitted medical reports to the police and recorded her statements but the police are yet to arrest the suspect even after she provided her M-Pesa statements to show the mobile number where money was sent from her phone.
But the National Police Service, through its spokesman, Muchiri Nyaga has denied claims that the rape investigations have collapsed and says the cases will be seen through to the end.
“The investigations are now back on track. The (inspector’s) issues that were under investigations are now complete and the (rape cases) investigations are ongoing,” Mr Nyaga stated.
