Advocate Ndegwa Njiru has revealed that former Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala, who was arrested in a dramatic ambush on Wednesday night, is being held at the Eldama Ravine Police Station.
Malala, whose arrest rests on a controversial play, Echoes of War, that he authored for Butere Girls Secondary School, was whisked away last night by officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), and Njiru has been following his whereabouts since.
"Advocates from Nakuru Cleophas Malala, one of the Gitungatis from western Kenya and a strong pillar of our struggle is being held at Eldama Ravine Police Station. Kindly and urgently mobilise. He is a prisoner of conscience," he wrote on Thursday morning.
The driver of Malala had previously informed the lawyer that the DCI officers had initially taken him to the Nakuru Central Police Station before he was whisked away in a police Subaru to an unknown location.
Echoes of War has been the centre of controversy since making it to the nationals in the high school drama festivals after students set to act in the play were initially sent home by their school principal and their place handed to Vihiga Boys High School.
A subsequent court order allowed the students to present the play, but the drama was not over yet, as the author, who is one of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua's devout followers, would be barred from accessing the students who were staying at Kirobon Girls Secondary School.
Dozens of DCI officers surrounded his vehicle while Malala lamented that no arrest warrant was shown to him.
In the ensuing chaos, tear gas canisters were lobbed into the crowd and affected, among others, journalists who had arrived to cover the scene.
Since the arrest, critics have come out in his defence, claiming that his arrest was an exaggeration of his alleged offence, which was writing a play with connotations of the deadly Gen Z protests of June 2024.
Gachagua was among those who came to his defence, calling out the government, which he alleged had normalised a lying culture.
"The use of the criminal justice system to suppress creativity and social audit has reached alarming proportions," he stated.
"It is a shame of unimaginable proportion that dozens of DCI detectives in five vehicles have been dispatched to arrest and intimidate Senator Cleophas Malala for writing a script that has won its way to the National Drama Festival in Nakuru."
Currently, high security has been posted outside the Melvin Jones Academy in Nakuru, the venue of this year's national drama festivals, and only students and officials are being allowed inside. Journalists are also not being allowed in.
