A family is seeking justice following the mysterious demise of their 21-year-old daughter at the Qwetu Hostels.
Neema Githae was found lifeless in her hostel on Friday, October 1, and the management called the police who took her body away.
Her family questioned why police removed the 21-year-old medical student's body without informing them yet the hostel had their details.
According to her mother, Linda Macharia, the hostel's management through the police called her to inform her that her daughter was no more.
"I believe for her body to be moved I needed to be called because she was an identified person. When I got to the mortuary I was told her body was brought in at 7am in the morning and the OCS called me at 4pm," Macharia stated.
"I feel there is something that is just not right. I don't know if that is how things are done, that is no way to treat the demise of a child. I need answers Qwetu have CCTV footage and I want to see what happened in that room," she added.
The mother also revealed that she was given a note purporting to be a self-destruction note but she dismissed it stating that the family had attached the KU student to a therapist that was helping her.
She acknowledged that like any other family they have had troubles but they were working through them and her daughter was open with her therapist who she saw often.
Regardless of Neema's mental issues, her family believes that she did not take her life and opted to hire the services of lawyer Danstan Omari even as DCI sleuths are looking into the matter.
Neema was a student at Kenyatta University residing at Qwetu Hostels who was undertaking her practicals in Embu.
It is not uncommon to find campus students battling mental issues. A study by researchers at the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenya Medical Research Institute (Kemri) and other collaborating researchers found that 36 per cent of university students were depressed. Of these, 39 per cent were female students while 34 per cent were male.
Studies done in colleges abroad showed that Kenyan students were the most depressed.
According to the study that was conducted among students from different UoN colleges, depression is still less understood despite being a common cause of morbidity and pre-mature death among university students.
