By Wanja Waweru
A police officer who was charged with killing a senior former Nakumatt auditor was given a seven-year prison term.
However, because he had been in custody for the same amount of time and had been found guilty of killing James Maina Karanja, Ezekiel Momanyi Onsongo was freed from prison.
On Nairobi’s Mombasa Road, Karanja, a former auditor for Nakumatt Holdings, was fatally shot in 2015.
Former Nakumatt accountant Philip Manyura Maroko and boda boda rider Dennison Mose Maroko, who were charged alongside Onsongo, were cleared by Justice James Wakiaga.
The prosecutor was found to have failed to establish its case against the two, the judge ruled.
The prosecutor was found to have failed to establish its case against the two, the judge ruled.
In his decision, the judge stated that he agreed with the arguments made by defense attorney John Ogada that the circumstantial evidence presented by the prosecution against Maroko did not satisfy the legal standard and that no motivation for killing Karanja had been proven.
The prosecution claimed that Maroko and other employees hired Onsongo, a policeman posted in Lavington, Nairobi, to assassinate the auditor.
The prosecution was led by senior assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Charles Okeyo. However, the judge decided that there was insufficient evidence to support Maroko’s claim that Onsongo was paid to kill Karanja.
Ogada had claimed in his filings that the government was not looking into his client’s finances.
