The group unleashes terror throughout the Kisii District, lynching suspected criminals and alleged witches in gruesome fashion. A video currently circulating on the internet shows some people being burnt alive as a large group watches.

They are even said to have offices in Kisii Town, yet district commissioner Benjamin Njoroge and district Criminal Investigations Department boss Issa Mohammed deny their existence. But everyone in the wider Kisi region knows that the dreaded Sungu Sungu gang that started as an approved vigilante group exists.

It started after the local administration and police gave it approval to help fight crime as a community policing organ. But it has transformed into a terror gang, with the authorities unwilling or unable to curb its activities. It is now being viewed as a local version of Mungiki.

Sungu Sungu is mentioned only in whispers. A Nation team found area residents terrified as they know that if they are suspected of exposing the group they will be burnt alive.

Those who agreed to talk about the group did so on condition that their identities are not revealed and no pictures are taken. They are aware that if Sungu Sungu targets someone, there is nowhere to hide.

“If they target you they first send a warning before storming your homestead, burning houses before they frog-match their victims away whom they beat up before lynching them,” one of the area residents said.

Members of the group are said to be aged between 18 and 45 years and ruthlessly execute suspects. They are also accused of being used as a hit squad to settle political scores, business rivalries or family and land disputes.

“The group is hired for as little as Sh5,000 to execute innocent people who have personal differences with whoever wishes to be their paymaster,” a resident said.

Sungu Sungu are also openly used during political campaigns, and it might be their links with politicians, the local police and administration that explain their immunity from prosecution.

The group is said to have started in Bonchari constituency in Kisii Central as a community policing outfit with blessings from the Kisii Central District Security Committee in the 1990s.

The group helped the police arrest suspected criminals, but they became disoriented when most of the suspects were set free due to lack of evidence to secure convictions.

With tacit approval of the local police and Provincial Administration, the Sungu Sungu gang started executing suspected criminals released by police or acquitted by courts. The members have also turned into witch hunters.

They kill those suspected of practising witchcraft. Many people suspected of witchcraft were lynched in Bonchari before similar killings were witnessed in other parts of Gusii-land such as Bogetutu, Nyaribari, Bogirango, Bobasi and Bomachoge.

Their message to criminals in the region is simple - either reform or be killed and they have lived with this maxim for more than 10 years now. Relatives of those killed by the Sungu Sungu are usually warned against burying the “criminals” in their rural homes.

The group is said to have an intricate intelligence gathering system; it places its informers in homes of suspected criminals and witches. “They later confront the suspects with evidence and warn them to reform, failure of which they go ahead and execute them in broad daylight,” an area resident said.

The group’s actions in the recent past has seen criminals flee the region. Those who are convicted through the official legal process refuse to go back to their homes after completing their jail terms.