BONDO: Twelve Form Three students from Maranda High School are detained at the Bondo Police Station following a planned Sunday afternoon arson attack that reduced a three-storey dormitory to ashes.

The suspects were caught red-handed by other students as they attempted to flee the burning building, before being handed over to law enforcement by the school administration.

Bondo Sub-County Police Commander Robert Aboki confirmed the incident adding that investigators have secured air-tight evidence against the suspects.

Detectives have recovered critical CCTV footage from two petrol stations within Bondo town, which explicitly shows six of the students purchasing the petrol believed to have been used in the attack.

According to police timelines, the operation began on Saturday, students pooled together KSh 2,500 to fund the crime.

Then, dressed in civilian clothes, they sneaked out of the school compound during a weekend sports event and proceeded to purchase eight liters of petrol which they smuggled into the institution and hid inside a dustbin.

Execution

The conspiracy escalated the following day; ”On Sunday after the afternoon tea break, the six were joined by six accomplices to execute the plan,” Mr Aboki stated.

“They spread blankets and mattresses along the corridors of the building, doused them in petrol, and set them ablaze.”

In an attempt to evade identification, the arsonists wore masks and hooded jackets.

Following the ignition, they fled to the school toilets to hide, where detectives later recovered the discarded civilian clothing.

While no casualties have been reported, the Owino “B” dormitory, which housed Form Four and Grade 10 students, was completely gutted. The administration confirmed that personal property worth thousands of shillings was instantly incinerated.

The incident triggered hostility within the institution, early Monday morning, management sent the entire Form Three cohort home indefinitely to defuse mounting, volatile tensions between them and the aggrieved Form Four candidates whose exam preparation has been severely disrupted.

The Maranda case is not isolated, earlier last week Ambira Boys’ High School in Ugunja sub-county was shut down indefinitely after students went on a violent rampage, heavily vandalizing the principal’s office, staff room, science laboratories, and the computer lab.

The consecutive unrest at both Ambira and Maranda has now forced regional security agencies and education stakeholders into emergency interventions, as communities demand answers over the rapidly deteriorating state of discipline in local schools.