A special police squad has been sent to a village in Kisii to investigate a bizarre incident where a gang kidnapped a three-year-old baby and gouged out his eyes before dumping him at the family’s banana plantation.
The gang is said to have taken away the child identified as Junior Sagini from his family home in Marani on Wednesday, December 15 evening and held him for more than six hours, sending his family in a panic as they searched for the minor’s whereabouts.
The minor was rushed to the Kisii Eye Hospital after he was found with his face covered with blood.
Doctors have said he will remain blind for now and he is recuperating in the general ward after a surgical procedure.
“Both his eyes had been removed completely, and there are some injuries in the lids…so it looks like there was a sharp instrument like a knife that was used,” said Dr. Daniel Kiage at the facility.
Residents of Ikuruma village in Marani, Kisii County, are yet to tell the motive of the incident.
Police had initially arrested Sagini’s father as a suspect in the investigations but later released him for lack of evidence connecting him to the crime.
Swathes of bandages are covering the emptiness where his eyes once were and unable to comprehend why his world is suddenly dark.
His family is calling on the police to speed up investigations and bring to book the perpetrators of this atrocity.
Doctors said Sagini is scheduled for a second operation as soon as he is stable enough.
The boy’s grandmother Rael Mayieka told police it all started when her grandson, went to fetch water from a nearby spring.
He was in the company of other children but it is said that he threw his jerrycan into a nearby thicket and started running away.
When the other children got home with their jerrycans full of water, they informed Sagini’s grandmother what had happened.
The granny went to the spring searching for her grandson, but he was nowhere to be seen.
It was until the following day that his elder brother who had gone to cut grass for the cows pounced on him in a maize plantation and alerted them.
A team of detectives has since been sent from Nairobi to boost local ones in the probe.
Director of Criminal Investigations Mohamed Amin said they want to know the motive and those behind it.
