![Nkonja had his left arm cut off by a group of men after he was caught stealing in the town of Meru [Idris Mukhtar/Al Jazeera]](https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2018/8/24/b0aac30a5a924dc89f27275d3f7d32af_18.jpg)
On a bitterly cold night in July 2014, Morris Nkonja grabbed his machete and set out along a muddy path off the main road in Mutuati, a hilly village in Meru, central Kenya.
His mission, like many other times before, was simple: break into a restaurant that was closed for the day, grab valuables and vanish in the dead of night.
“I broke the door and went straight to the counter where they keep cash,” recalls the now-30-year-old. “I smashed the safe box and seized all the cash inside. I thought it was a lucky night for me.”
But Nkonja’s luck quickly ran out. As soon as he stepped outside, he was instantly surrounded by five men, also equipped with long, sharp-edged machetes.
“It was well-planned. They knew I was coming and that is why they waited silently for me to finish,” says Nkonja, who was a well-known robber in the area.
“I will never forget that night,” he adds, massaging his knee with his rough right palm.
The men had been hired by the owner of the restaurant to protect it due to the rising crime rate in Mutuati.
“Everything has a start and an end, and tonight will be your last!” roared a man in the group.
“Which limb do you want us to chop off?” another asked Nkonja, who was now begging for mercy.
A machete promptly came down, cutting off the robber’s left arm. In a blink of an eye, the five men had served their own form of “justice” – no need for police or courts to get involved.
Crime is a major problem in Meru, a khat-rich county where many residents depend on the trade of the mild narcotic.
Last year, Meru recorded Kenya’s second-highest number of crimes: 5,151, or seven percent of all cases nationwide. In 2015, it topped the list with the highest number of murder cases across Kenya’s 47 Kenyan counties.
Daniel Mbogori, 54, is a private security officer who is frequently hired to protect businesses in Mutuati. Over the past 10 years, he says he has used his machete to cut off the limbs of more than 40 thieves.
He says the surging number of crimes and a slow prosecution process are the main reasons people hire him.
“If we take them to the police, they are bailed out for a small amount of money and they continue stealing. But if we give justice to them, they reform and become good men,” says Mbogori.