The man Murang’a police say hanged himself inside the operations room of Kenol Police Station on August 5 has been identified as 35-year-old Stephen Mwangi.

On Tuesday, Mwangi’s father, John Muiruri dismissed the police account after identifying the body at the Murang’a Level Five Hospital mortuary.

“I do not buy the police fairy tale that my son hanged himself. Even if he were to, not in the plot that the police are spinning,” he said.

Mr Muiruri, who hails from Njora village in Kigumo Constituency, said his son had been missing for a week before his death.

“We thought he would return, as he had a habit of leaving and later coming back,” he said.

On Monday, he received a call from the village elder asking him to go to Kenol Police Station. 

There, he found a Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officer who told him how they had identified his son’s body. 

He added that the officer then narrated a version of events that made me feel like laughing despite his grief.

He was told his son “sneaked” into the station, entered one office then moved into another, locked himself inside and first attempted to hang himself using a phone charging cable, which broke.

He then used a computer charging cable tied to the window grills to take his life. 

When Mr Muiruri asked to see the scene, he was surprised to learn it was the operations room where anti-riot weapons are stored.

“I asked how such a critical office was unmanned and accessible. The officer replied, ‘It happens, sometimes,’” he said.

The father added that officers who accompanied him to the mortuary offered to pay for the post-mortem examination and burial costs, which he found suspicious.

The family has rejected the offer and will instead hire a private pathologist and seek assistance from human rights groups. 

Mr Muiruri now wants the Independent Police Oversight Authority (Ipoa) to take up the matter and investigate the case.

Murang’a South police boss Charity Karimi maintained that preliminary investigations point to suicide.