The death of controversial preacher Gilbert Deya has thrust Kenyans back into the shadows of one of the country’s most unsettling “miracle babies” saga that stunned the world.
Deya, who built a sprawling televangelist empire that spanned continents, died tragically on Tuesday evening, 17 June 2025, in a fatal road crash along the Kisumu–Bondo highway.
In 2017, Deya was extradited from the United Kingdom after a decade-long legal battle to keep him there.
The UK government handed him over to Kenyan authorities to face child trafficking charges.
At the heart of the scandal were claims that Deya and his church were involved in the theft of babies from impoverished families in Nairobi, parading them as “miracle children” supposedly conceived through divine intervention.
Back in Kenya, the self-proclaimed archbishop faced five counts of child stealing involving minors all under the age of 14.
According to police and prosecutors, Deya claimed that his prayers could make infertile and post-menopausal women conceive even without intercourse and deliver within just a few months.
These claims, authorities alleged, were backed by stolen babies used to “prove” the miracles.
The women, mostly from the UK, were told they had conceived miraculously and were sent to Kenya to give birth.
Upon return, they applied to British authorities to bring the newborns with them, a move that triggered suspicion and investigations.
One of the earliest cracks in Deya’s story emerged in 2004, when a British coroner ruled that a three-week-old baby named Sarah, who had died under mysterious circumstances, was not biologically related to either of her supposed parents.
The case was so unusual that it forced the coroner’s court to confront, for the first time in centuries, the question of whether a miracle had taken place. The answer, supported by DNA tests, was a clear no.
Despite the severity of the allegations and the gravity of the scandal, Deya was eventually acquitted.
In 2023, a Nairobi court cleared him of the charges after finding that the prosecution had failed to present sufficient evidence.
Senior Principal Magistrate Robison Ondieki ruled that none of the 26 witnesses brought by the state had definitively linked Deya to the alleged baby thefts.
“The prosecution, having failed to establish circumstantial evidence, I acquit the accused under section 215 of the Criminal Procedure Court [CPC],” Ondieki said.
Even with his name cleared in the courts, Deya remained a polarizing figure.
His Gilbert Deya Ministries had built a massive following in the UK, with churches in major cities including London, Birmingham, Nottingham, Liverpool, and Manchester.
His followers continued to revere him as a man of God, while his critics branded him a fraud who exploited faith and desperation for personal gain.
Deya’s life came to a tragic end on June 17, 2025, after his Toyota Noah collided with a Siaya County Government vehicle following an attempt to evade a head-on crash with a Moi University bus.
The accident also left 15 students injured, some critically.
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