How witchcraft allegations got four women killed

The High Court in Kisii has jailed a father for 40 years while his teenage son got 15 for their role in the murder of four elderly women at Marani in Kisii two years ago.

High Court Judge Kiarie wa Kiarie also sent two other men to jail for their role in the macabre incident.

The court ruled that Evans Ogeto Okari, the father, and his son, identified in court only as Makworo and aged 17 at the time the offence was committed, played a central role in the murders.

Amos Nyakundi and Hesborn Gichana were also handed 40 years behind bars for their role in the mob justice kind of attack.

The court acquitted 12 other suspects after the prosecution failed to prove the accusations against them.

READ: Witch hunters and murderers in Kisii sentenced to 40 years

During the trial, the court heard that the suspects had gathered at Okari’s home after a whistle was blown inviting villagers to convene over an incident that involved witchcraft activities.

The court heard that witches had taken the teenager the night before the incident and rendered him dumb after walking with him the entire night.

Strange paraphernalia

His father said he woke up to a shocking site of strange paraphernalia outside his house before he discovered that his son could not speak.

“I woke up to find a cross and what looked like a grave outside my house. A shirt of my son(second accused) was placed on the cross and he was there, unable to talk,” he said.

The father told the court that villagers who had gathered in his compound killed the women but he was not involved in the acts.

The son, while defending himself, said he was too sick the entire day of the incident to comprehend what was happening.

This was in contradiction with an account given by one of the key witnesses, who said the young man was the first to hit the first woman who was lynched after a rite to identify the witches started.

An agreement had been made that all villagers shake hands with the mute boy and whoever he would identify was the witch.

“When Jemimah Nyangate was told to greet Makworo and she was about to do so, the boy stood and kicked her. She fell,” the protected witness recounted.

That was when one of the accused took a machete and started slashing her. The mob joined the battering and alleged that she was a witch.

In one of the trial sessions during the hearing of the matter, sons of the victims gave horrifying accounts of how their mothers were arrested by villagers, frog-matched, and lynched in broad daylight as they also survived with injuries.

ALSO READ: Bloody witch hunts spark fear in Kisii

Peter Monari and Tom Onkware, sons to one Sigara, who at the time of the murder was 93, recounted the horrible happenings that preceded the painful lynching of their aged mother.

Monari told the court that the lynch mob had found him picking coffee on his mother’s farm and inquired where the house of the elderly woman was. They said they wanted to ask her something that they didn’t disclose.

The second brother was badly injured after he brought his motorcycle, wanting to drive the helpless woman to the police. He instead was met with blows and was also hit with a hoe by one of the perpetrators before they whisked the mother away.

The son of Sindege Mayaka, another victim, at one point moved the court to tears after he narrated how he was maimed by the assailants he said he knew very well, all that while as the lynch mob manhandled his mother in her compound before they frog-matched her and doused her with some paraffin they had found in her house.

“One of them came out with a bottle containing paraffin. When I asked them why they were doing so, three of them came to me and held my hands, one of them cut me into the head with a panga,” he narrated.