Baby Thief Arrested In Kirinyaga

The woman, who was arrested at the Kimbimbi Sub County Hospital where she was seeking medical assistance, is said to have stolen the baby, a boy, from an unknown location in Nairobi.

Mwea-East Police Boss Titus Yoma said that the woman confessed to police officers that she took the baby from unknown location in Nairobi.

Cases of babies theft in the country have been on the rise with several of them being reported in hospitals and residential areas.

Last month, police in Nakuru's Free Area Estate arrested four women believed to be part of a cartel involved in a child trafficking syndicate.

Two babies aged two and four days were rescued from a house in Kiratina where a woman believed to be a midwife worked as a broker between pregnant mothers and buyers from across the country.

NYUMBA KUMI

Nakuru police boss, Bernard Kioko said that the four were arrested through the efforts of Nyumba Kumi and community policing leaders in the area.

“Those who were arrested include two suspected buyers from Nairobi and Kisumu, a midwife, the mother of one infant and the plot owner,” said Kioko.

Kioko added that the four are believed to be part of a ring involved in the stealing children from Nairobi and hiding them in Nakuru before selling them out to clients from mainly Uganda.

“We have had many case of children being stolen from Nairobi and being found in Nakuru and we suspect this ring must be behind the vice,” he said.

In January this year, a Nairobi couple was hunting for a house help who went missing from their Zimmerman home with their two-year-old daughter.

Mr Njagi and his wife Josephine left their daughter, Annabel Wanjiku, in the house at around 10:30 am with her care giver who had started working for the family only six days before.

The house help, Joyce Nekesa Wafula, was hired by the family through an estate bureau called Betty Bureau.

The couple had made sure they obtained copies of her identification documents.

CROSS BORDER SYNDICATE

They say she had attended to all household chores properly and had taken care of the children to their satisfaction.

Last year, a Kenyan baby stolen from its mother just four days after birth returned to the country after a South Sudanese court ordered that he be brought back.

The baby had been in the custody of the Kenyan Embassy for four months, before he was finally flown in.

His story begun on September 30th 2013 when a woman in her 40s boarded a Simba Coach bus destined for Juba in Nairobi.

The woman, who has since been jailed for child abduction, boarded the bus after claiming that she was the real mother of the child.

While the abductor managed to pass through the Kenya-Uganda border, she was not lucky after crossing into South Sudan.

BORDER POINT

The baby started crying and the other passengers got concerned because the mother was neither breastfeeding nor soothing it.

The passengers alerted the police at the Namule border point in South Sudan.

The woman initially said she was the mother, but later changed her argument saying she had only been given the baby to bring it to South Sudan.

Through the South Sudanese authorities, two other women, one from Kenya and another from South Sudan were arrested.

The baby was returned to Nairobi by Kenyan Foreign Affairs officials following a court order in Juba that the baby be brought back.

According to the embassy, the baby’s three would-be abductors have since been jailed, with the Kenyan getting a year behind bars for abduction and trafficking.

By Maureen Murimi