Joginder Singh Sokhi, former assistant commissioner of police, dies at 82

Kenya’s former Assistant Commissioner of Police, Joginder Singh Sokhi passes away at the age of 82 in Nairobi.

He spent four decades in the police service of pre and post colonial Kenya, retiring at the height of his career in 1984 and earning himself the image of a fearless cilvil servant.

His way of working was so efficient that he joined the Kenya Police as a Constable at the age of just 16 in 1952. He was even posted in Traffic Patrol in Nairobi and Rural Patrol during the height of the Mau Mau emergency.

The tall, turbaned Sikh who wore his trademark dark glasses, was the first Asian policeman to be posted at the Kilimani Police Station. It was due to his personal discipline and commitment to law-and-order that President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta appointed him to head the investigations into the high-profile assassination of Tom Mboya in 1969.

Kenya’s second President, Daniel Toroitich Arap Moipulled him out of retirement and appointed him as Senior Superintendent of Police in 1997. Joginder later set up his own investigative firm when he finally called it a day as a policeman, but remained true to his investigative ways to continue serving in the name of truth and justice.