The Director of Public Prosecutions has ordered the immediate arrest and prosecution of a Personal Assistant and a relative to East Africa Affairs Principal Secretary Abdi Dubat for assaulting a house girl in Nairobi’s Kilimani area.
In a letter to Kilimani Police Station, Dorcas Rugut, an Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions directed the officers at the station to charge the suspects namely Ibrahim Hussein Omar (a relative and a PA to the PS Abdi Dubat) and his brother Ali Hussein Omar who is an employee of Kenya power for assaulting the woman on May 18 this year.
“You are hereby directed to have the suspects charged immediately for the offence of assault causing actual bodily harm contrary to section 215 of the Penal Code,”the ODPP letter states in part.
While recommending the prosecution of the two relatives of the PS, ODPP stated that there is overwhelming evidence that the duo intentionally and recklessly assaulted the complainant Miriam Atieno Okello.
The domestic worker says Ibrahim assaulted, tortured, and insulted her client under the guise of a family dispute, accompanied by his brother, Ali.
Subsequently, they forcibly ejected her from the premises and confiscated her personal belongings with the assistance of their siblings.
Immediately after the incident, Atieno sought medical attention at Maria Immaculata Hospital and later reported the matter at Kilimani police station where the report was booked under Occurrence Book (OB) number 38/18/5/2024.
“Having gone through the police file and the evidence presented in it by way of witness statements, medical examination notes, and the statement of the investigating officer, we do find that the evidence as presented does satisfy the threshold required to be admitted for approval,” Rugut stated while okaying the two suspects prosecution.
The state prosecutor says that from a comprehensive look at the witness testimonies in the police file, it is apparent that the incident happened in private and pitted a house-help against her employer and immediate family.
“The assault occurred at residential premises making it virtually impossible to have an independent witness to buttress the allegations leveled against the suspects by the complainant. However, that does not negate the fact that there are circumstances that an offence can be committed without there being a battery of witnesses to support the sequence of events witnessed,” ODPP says.
” An analysis of the P3 form indicates that there was swelling on the head, tenderness and swellings on the right sternal area, and right wrist bruising with the cause of injury being the use of hand and fist. The complainant has positively identified her assailant,” Prosecutor Rugut adds.
The green light to prosecute the two men comes barely hours after a group of activists demanded the prosecution of the two people accused of assaulting the house girl.
On Friday, the group staged three separate street protests and marched to the office of the Inspector General of Police and that of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) where they left a memorandum.
The activist and the victim’s lawyer Karen Rono have accused PS Dubat of interference in the matter in a bid to have his two relatives not charged with the criminal offences.
Lawyer Rono is said to have written a different letter to the Public Service Commission and police, stating that the accused, one Ibrahim, took an unauthorized photograph of the housegirl, verbally abused her, and threatened to publish the photograph, falsely accusing her of murder in the company of his siblings.
“These actions are unequivocally unacceptable and represent a grave violation of our client’s rights. Such conduct is unbecoming of employees of Public Service Commission and Kenya Power and Lighting Company respectively and constitutes a serious breach of both legal and ethical standards expected from public servants,” Rono stated in the letter.
“The incident has caused significant emotional distress and reputational harm to our client, necessitating immediate and decisive action,” the letter to KPLC said in part.
