A group of friends had just stepped out of Club Babel in Eldoret when one of them was accosted by a plainclothesman believed to be a cop.
The alleged cop accused the man only identified as Mathew of ‘walking like a Chinese’.
It was not a lucky night for Mathew, a university student, as he was roughed up by the said man, slapped and handcuffed within a blink of an eye.
The said man then threatened to take him to the police station, where he told him he would pay an arm and a leg to get released if they did not agree there.
“I ended up giving him Sh500 so that he could let me go,” Mathew said.
Mathew’s friends had fled when they saw what was happening, lest they became targets, only watching from a reasonable distance.
The friends had gone to the club to catch a champions league match pitting Manchester United against Valencia, which ended in a dreary nil-nil draw.
It is a common practice for people acting as policemen to accost innocent people and thereafter ask them for money in order to be released. It is not is not clear whether they are genuine policemen or juts conmen taking advantage of Kenyans chronic fear of spending the night in a police cell.
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