Investigations into the brutal murder of teacher-cum-blogger Albert Ojwang at Nairobi’s Central Police Station have revealed the great lengths rogue police officers go to tamper with evidence to interfere with criminal investigations.

The case of Central Police Station bears striking similarities with another case where a prisoner was murdered inside Ruaraka Police Station cells, also by the Station Commander, before he embarked on a scheme to cover up the murder, including releasing some suspects who may have witnessed the killings.

Investigations by the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA) and the Internal Affairs Unit (IAU) revealed that Chief Inspector Jackson Tallam ordered the release of some suspects and even summoned a technician to tamper with the CCTV after Ojwang was murdered.

Tallam and his secretary, Constable Sharon Cheboi, supervised the tampering of the CCTV by a technician and paid him Ksh3,000 for the service.

The 23-year-old technician, Kevin Matava, who was arrested on June 13, 2025, in Saika, confessed that he tampered with the CCTV after being instructed by the two officers.

In his statement to the detectives, he indicated that he was called by Constable Cheboi on June 8, 2025, at 6:22 am, who instructed him to proceed to the station immediately.

Upon arrival at the station, the officer escorted him to OCS Talam’s office, where the server and the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for the surveillance cameras are located.

He further told the detectives that the OCS requested him to delete the video footage for June 6 and 7, 2025, but he informed him that deleting footage for specific days was not possible and the only option was to format the storage hard driv,e which would delete everything stored and restore it to factory settings.

OCS Tallam also released some petty offenders who had been arrested and detained in custody.

Preliminary investigations into the June 2025 Central case also indicate that Ojwang was tortured inside the cells in the presence of Talam, Constable James Mukwana and two other men who are yet to be identified.

Constable Mukhwana, a former Administration Police Service officer, was arrested on June 12, 2025.

The elaborate scheme to tamper with the crucial evidence was exposed by the technician, who said he was well aware of the CCTV system, having been contracted last year to install it.

According to him, it had a storage capacity of 30 days and included a total of 25 CCTV cameras.

The cameras were installed at the report office, the corridor leading to the cells, all corridors on the two floors and on the parking yard from the entrance.

The probe further revealed that on June 9, 2025, at around 6.28 am, Constable Cheboi again called the technician and requested him to proceed to Central police station with a new hard drive so that he could replace the old one at the server.

“The officer also advised him not to wear a reflector or any clothing that would show that he is a technician,” a senior detective said.

Detectives have already recorded statements from at least 23 people, including 17 police officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and those at the Central and Mawego Police Stations.

Matava is the second suspect to be arrested over the incident as police hunt for more suspects, including OCS Talam, who is said to have gone underground.

IPOA chairperson Isaac Hassan told the National Assembly’s Security Committee that digital video recorder (DVR) logs showed the discs were changed and formatted on June 8, 2025, at 07:23:29 and 07:23:48 hours.

Hassan said the move was part of a well-planned scheme to erase surveillance footage linked to the events leading to Ojwang’s death while in police custody.

In another almost similar case in Ruaraka, the OCS Chief Inspector Nahashon Mutua, who is now serving his sentence, attacked Martin Koome Manayara using a blunt object, thereby breaking his eight ribs on the night of December 19, 2013.

His head was also immersed in a drum of water.

After his death, Mutua faked a report that the deceased had been assaulted by cellmates and charged one of them with the murder.

The cover-up included the reconstruction of an OB to implicate the deceased as “violent” and even implicated one of the suspects, identified as Kelvin Odhiambo. However, the ODPP later withdrew the charges upon learning of the scheme.

IPOA lead investigator testified in court that most of the police officers based at the station were part of the elaborate cover-up.

The OCS also released several suspects and even offered to pay medical fees for robbery suspect Victor Kioko, who was removed from the cells and driven to Uhai Neema Hospital, where he was treated and his bills paid before being released unconditionally.