More women suffer marital violence

Ms Zipporah Wanjugu at her Nyahururu Hospital bed is consoled by Laikipia Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Chairperson Irene Wachuka after she was battered by her husband. [Photo: James Munyeki/Standard]

Two women have been admitted to the same hospital with serious injuries after they were beaten by their husbands.

Zipporah Wanjugu and Vivian Moraa have fractured hands and serious wounds on their heads and all over their bodies, injuries they sustained during two separate incidents on Wednesday night.

In the first incident, Ms Wanjugu had gone to pick her three-month-old baby from the father’s house in Wiyumiririe village, Laikipia Central.

The two live in the same village and the man had taken the child away from her rental home.

It was at his house that her husband attacked her with a panga.

According to Ms Wanjugu, she separated with her spouse two months ago and the man had stormed her house and took away the baby.

“He hurled abuses at me, warning that he would kill me. It was then that he took a panga and started attacking me. I fell unconscious and only found myself at the hospital,” she said.

Ms Wanjugu recalled that the husband later tried to take poison before he was arrested by police and locked up at Ndaragwa Police Station.

“It is my neighbours who took me to hospital. They told me my husband had tried to commit suicide before he was arrested,” said the mother of four.

She said they had been embroiled in domestic squabbles and that she was the sole breadwinner by doing menial jobs.

In the second incident, Ms Moraa quarreled with her husband after she failed to share her July salary with him. The manual labourer at Suera Flowers Company had gone home with household goods she had bought from Nyahururu town and that angered her spouse.

Sparked uproar

“He said it was wrong for me to buy household goods and yet he did not have money. That is when he picked a panga and attacked me, saying my hands should be chopped off just like the other lady we saw on TV,” she narrated.

The two incidents have sparked an uproar from residents who demanded that perpetrators of domestic violence should be arrested.

Laikipia Maendeleo Ya Wanawake Chairperson Irene Wachuka said stern action should be taken against those who victimise others in marriage.

“This is an issue the Government should be keen on and we shouldn’t allow it to happen. Stern action must be taken to end this vice,” she reiterated .