New evidence presented in court has placed Police Constable Isaiah Murangiri at the heart of Nairobi’s Central Business District (CBD) on the day Rex Kanyike Masai was fatally shot. Safaricom’s Zachary Kirogoi Mburu testifies in court. Masai, 29, was shot on Moi Avenue near Kencom as police moved to disperse demonstrators opposing the 2024/2025 Finance Bill. He was rushed to Bliss Hospital but succumbed to his injuries, with rights groups accusing the police of excessive force and cover-ups. Constable Murangiri has since emerged as the main suspect in the case after IPOA flagged his presence in the CBD and secured telecommunications data tying him to the area.
Why did Safaricom produce Murangiri’s records? On Monday, September 15, a senior Safaricom official told Milimani Law Courts that cellphone data from the officer’s registered numbers was traced to locations around Kencom and St. Ellis House on June 20, 2024, when Masai was gunned down. Zachary Kirogoi Mburu, a senior manager in charge of law enforcement liaison at Safaricom PLC, produced call data and location logs for three mobile numbers registered under suspects in the case. Two of the numbers were linked directly to Constable Murangiri, one to Benson Kamau, and another to Michael Oginga Okello.
Mburu told Senior Principal Magistrate Geoffrey Onsarigo that court orders had compelled the company to release call records covering June 18 and June 19, 2024, alongside location data for June 20. Was Muragiri in CBD during Masai’s shooting? According to the records, Murangiri’s two numbers showed activity on June 18 but none on June 19. On June 20, however, both numbers registered signals in the CBD, with network masts at St. Ellis and Kencom serving his phone between 7:45pm and 8:11pm “Those locations are the locations for the cites that were serving him, so it basically means that he was in that vicinity on June 20, 2024,” Mburu testified. The data was part of an Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) request to map the movements of officers deployed during the Gen Z-led demonstrations. During cross-examination, Safaricom’s Mburu explained that location accuracy within the CBD is limited to about 200 meters because of the dense concentration of masts. He also confirmed that numbers can still appear active even if their registered owners are no longer using them, depending on how the lines are handled.
By Didacus Malowa
