Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Eliud Lagat during a past function. PHOTO | COURTESY
The father of the late Albert Omondi Ojwang has asked the courts to compel the arrest and prosecution of Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) Eliud Lagat, whom he accuses of orchestrating his son’s abduction, torture, and death while in police custody.
In a replying affidavit filed in support of a petition dated June 24, 2025, Meshack Ojwang paints a harrowing account of what he believes was a state-sanctioned cover-up designed to protect a senior police chief at the expense of truth and justice.
“I am the biological father of the late Albert Omondi Ojwang, the subject of this Petition,” he states, adding that his son was “a law-abiding Kenyan citizen and a young man with a promising future whose life was brutally cut short while in the custody of the Kenya Police Service.”
According to the affidavit, Albert was arrested on June 7, 2025, at the family’s rural home by Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers allegedly acting under the command of DIG Lagat.
The officers reportedly claimed Albert had circulated information linking the DIG to corruption within the police service. The father says he later received information that his son was “secretly detained at Central Police Station, Nairobi, where he was subjected to torture, humiliation, and severe beatings on the instructions of DIG Eliud Lagat.”
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Albert did not make it out alive. The affidavit states that he “succumbed to grievous injuries inflicted on him while in police custody, including blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation.”
Shortly after his death, the Inspector General of Police declared that Albert had taken his own life by banging his head against a cell wall.
Meshack contests that explanation entirely, pointing instead to a post-mortem report which, he says, “completely ruled out suicide and confirmed that his death was due to injuries consistent with torture and strangulation.”
Despite this, he alleges, no action was taken against DIG Lagat. Instead, lower-ranking officers have been charged in High Court at Kibera in Criminal Case No. E010 of 2025.
The father terms the prosecution “a deliberate cover-up scheme meant to shield DIG Eliud Lagat from accountability,” insisting that the officers were merely following orders.
He further points to Senate proceedings in which the DCI leadership allegedly affirmed that Lagat “remained as the prime suspect,” a detail he says confirms that no legitimate process ever exonerated the DIG.
“As a grieving father, I am deeply troubled that the prosecution appears to shield DIG Eliud Lagat by shifting the entire blame onto the officers that were acting on his instructions and command,” he swears in the affidavit.
He now wants the High Court to halt the ongoing criminal trial and issue directions ensuring that Lagat is arrested and charged.
“Justice for my son will not be realized unless the DIG Eliud Kipkoech Lagat is charged and prosecuted as the lead suspect in this matter,” he states.
He goes ahead to ask the court to intervene to prevent what he fears will be “a miscarriage of justice and denial of closure to me and my family.”