The Inspector General of Police, Douglas Kanja, and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) boss, Amin Mohamed, have informed the court that they were not properly served with summons to appear in court.
On January 13, Justice Mwita ordered Kanja and Amin to appear in person on Friday, January 17, to address the disappearance of three men in Mlolongo, Machakos County, in December 2024. However, the two did not attend court as directed.
During the court proceedings, lawyer Paul Nyamodi, representing the two police chiefs, explained to Justice Chacha Mwita that his clients were not properly served with the January 8 orders. He cited the use of an incorrect email address as the reason for the failure to comply with the judge’s directives.
Nyamodi further requested the court to allow Kanja and Amin to file their responses and urged the judge to dismiss any penal consequences for non-compliance with the summons.
Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja during a recent media engagement on December 20, 2024.
NPS
“The petitioners failed to prove that the emails used to send the court orders were legitimate addresses of the respondents,” Nyamodi asserted.
As a result, the IG and the DCI director were not given an opportunity to present their case. “Unless this application is certified as urgent and heard promptly, there is a risk of a grave miscarriage of justice,” they said in their application.
However, the petitioners’ lawyer, Noel Otieno, insisted that service was properly effected, as electronic communication is legally recognised.
The police chiefs are now asking the court to set aside the orders requiring them to produce the missing persons, whether alive or dead.
This is not the only case where the police chiefs have been summoned to court, in what is becoming a trend. The IG and the DCI boss have been summoned in a separate case to explain the spate of abductions.
In an opinion piece this week, the Interior Cabinet Secretary, Kipchumba Murkomen, questioned the trend, arguing that it is distracting the officers from performing their primary duties.
“When we deeply reflect on what effective policing means to our brothers and sisters across the nation, we find it difficult to allow the normalisation of the attacks against our first line of defence simply because they are doing their job of protecting all of us from some of us who are potentially dangerous,” he wrote in the piece published on Nation Africa.
The High Court will, on Thursday next week, rule on whether it will set aside orders requiring the attendance of IG Kanja and DCI Amin in court over the alleged abduction of three Mlolongo men.
DCI Director Mohammed Amin.
Photo
Kelly Ayodi