Teenager brutally attacked, hands chopped off for allegedly stealing Miraa

A 17-year-old boy from Mutuate village in Meru County receiving treatment at Meru Teaching and Referral Hospital after a group of three men attacked him Saturday September 3, chopping off both his arms.

The boy, Stanley Kinoti, who says he had never previously met his three assailants, reports that they accused him of miraa from their farm.

The teenager, Stanley Kinoti, says he was heading to the market at night to get a cup of tea in a nearby hotel when he was approached by three men: a popular business man and his two sons who “threatened to cut off his head and arms before attacking him with a machete”.

“One of the boys said ‘…let us cut his arms and take him back home!,” said Kinoti on hospital bed, adding: “His father wanted my head chopped off.”

Kinoti says the tycoon then inflicted deep cuts on his head before removing his trousers leaving him naked and bleeding.

The teenager’s relatives rushed him to a health facility where he received treatment.

Karimi Mbogo, a lawyer who voluntarily agreed to represent the victim, said justice must be served.

“This has happened because the young man comes from a very humble family,” Mbogo said. “I have come into the picture because the community where the boy was coming from was very saddened by the incident. Justice must be served; I will see to it that this boy has his day in guard.”

The three men have since been arrested waiting to be arraigned in court.

Cases of assault and deaths in connection with theft of miraa are in the rise in Meru County and farmers allege that security agencies are doing little to stamp out the vice.