A senior police officer was arrested after he narrowly escaped lynching by an irate mob in Thika for demanding a bribe from a liquor store on Wednesday.

Davies Simiyu Musundi, a police inspector at Kikuyu Police Station, narrowly escaped lynching from an irate group of young men.

Simiyu together with two other accomplices visited Heisenberg Wines and Spirits masquerading as Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) officials.

The trio conducted a thorough inspection of the liquor store, then turned to its owner identifies as David Mathenge and accused him of failing to issue ETR Tax invoices to customers and selling alcoholic products with fake excise duty stamps.

After accusing the liquor store owner of all that, they demanded a hefty bribe from him before letting him be.

Meanwhile, a group of young men who hang around such establishments was watching the rogue officers ransacking their local joint.

The group of young men grew impatient as they were not being amused by the actions of the ‘KRA’ officers and Mathenge on the other hand stood his ground that he is a compliant taxpayer operating a legitimate business.

The officers tried to arrest Mathenge when his instincts told him these men were criminals and made him raise an alarm.

His SOS distress signal was immediately picked by the group of already agitated young men who responded promptly to Mathenge’s call, baying for the rogue cops’ blood.

Upon realising the group of irate young men closing in on them, two of Simiyu’s accomplices scampered for their safety and escaped in a getaway car.

Unfortunately for Simiyu, he was cornered and the mob descended on him with slaps, blows and kicks.

It took the intervention of police officers who were on patrol in the area who heard the commotion and rushed to the scent in time to save Simiyu from his predicament.

An interrogation by the officers quickly established that Simiyu was a rogue police officer on interdiction.

Upon further inspection of the suspect, a fake KRA identification document was recovered from Simiyu.

He is facing three court cases at the Nakuru and Milimani Law Courts for impersonating KRA officials.

Simiyu is currently in police custody, facing impersonation and forgery charges.