The inquest into the death of Rex Kanyike Masai has exposed a deeply troubling problem at the heart of Kenya’s policing system: when police officers are required to account for what happened, the system can suddenly become slow, complicated and strangely difficult to access.
Masai was killed during the anti-government protests of June 2024. More than two years later, his family and the public are still waiting for a clear account of what happened.
The latest proceedings at the Milimani Law Courts have only raised more questions about why getting answers has proved so difficult.
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) told the court that police officers from Parliament, KICC, Kamukunji and Kilimani police stations had failed to record statements despite an existing court order directing them to do so.
This is not a minor administrative issue. These are officers and police stations that could potentially hold information about what happened on the day Masai was killed.IPOA lawyer David Tenge told the court that the summons issued to the officers had not been honoured.
The authority therefore returned to court seeking another order compelling the officers to appear before IPOA and give their accounts.
That development should concern every Kenyan.If a police officer is ordered by a court to cooperate with an independent oversight body investigating the death of a young Kenyan, compliance should not be optional. It should not require repeated court orders. It should not become a bureaucratic battle.
Yet that is where the Masai inquest now finds itself.
The explanation offered by lawyers representing the National Police Service is equally troubling.
The court was told that many of the officers responsible for keeping records at the affected stations had either been transferred or had left the service.
The NPS said it was still collating the records and that the process would take longer.But justice cannot be transferred with an officer.
Records cannot simply disappear because a police officer has been moved to another station. Accountability cannot depend on whether the person who held information remains in the same office.
A functioning police institution is expected to preserve evidence, maintain records and ensure that investigations can continue even when personnel change.
Otherwise, transfers and staff departures risk becoming a convenient shield against accountability.
The case becomes even more troubling because of evidence from Absa Bank’s Head of Security, Joash Owanga. He told the court that CCTV footage from an Absa branch in Nairobi’s Central Business District had captured events on the evening of June 20, 2024.
Yet he also said he had never been questioned by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations or any other investigative agency about the footage.
That raises a straightforward question: how seriously was the available evidence pursued?
When a death occurs during a major public protest, investigators should be chasing every credible lead.
They should be identifying witnesses, securing CCTV footage, recording statements and preserving every piece of evidence that could establish what happened.
The public should not have to wonder years later why obvious witnesses were never interviewed.
This is why the growing perception of a cover-up is so dangerous.
A cover-up does not necessarily require someone sitting in a room and deciding to destroy evidence. It can also take the form of institutional silence, unexplained delays, missing records, unanswered summons and officials passing responsibility from one desk to another.
Whether intentional or caused by incompetence, the result can be the same: the truth becomes harder to establish.
The National Police Service has a responsibility beyond defending its officers. It has a responsibility to defend the integrity of the institution itself. If an officer acted lawfully, the evidence should establish that.
If an officer acted unlawfully, the evidence should establish that too.
The answer cannot be to make the investigation harder.
The Masai family deserves more than procedural explanations. They deserve the truth. Kenyans who witnessed the protests deserve to know whether the institutions charged with protecting them followed the law.
And the police themselves deserve a process that clears innocent officers and holds culpable officers responsible.
The prosecution has told the court that the evidence already presented is sufficient for a determination, with only one witness remaining to produce a certificate.
But if important police officers have still not given their accounts despite a court order, the public is entitled to ask whether the full picture has really been placed before the court.
The court must ultimately decide the facts. But the police should not be the institution standing in the way of those facts being established.
Kenya cannot claim to have a professional police service while police officers can allegedly ignore summons from the country’s policing oversight body. It cannot claim to respect the rule of law when court orders appear to require repeated enforcement. And it cannot build public trust while families seeking answers are confronted with missing statements, transferred officers and records that take years to assemble.
The death of Rex Kanyike Masai should not become another unresolved chapter in Kenya’s long history of alleged police abuses.
The country has heard too many promises about police reform. It has seen too many investigations that move slowly until public attention disappears. It has watched too many families wait for justice while institutions protect themselves behind procedure.
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