Police in Nakuru have arrested Zachariah Wanjohi in connection with the death of his 23-year-old wife, Hannah Waithera, an M-Pesa agent whose decomposed body was discovered a week after she was reported missing.
Waithera, who operated a mobile money outlet in Nakuru’s central business district, was last seen on Wednesday of the previous week as she left her shop to deposit more than Ksh.250,000 at a local bank.
She never returned, prompting her family to report her disappearance to the Central Police Station in Nakuru.
The breakthrough came on Wednesday afternoon when Wanjohi’s family was summoned to Kaptembwa Police Station in Nakuru West.
Officers informed them that a decomposing body, discovered two days earlier in a plantation at Technology Farm, had been positively identified as Waithera.
Her phone was last traced to the Kijabe area on the day she vanished, further deepening the mystery surrounding her disappearance.
In a statement prior to his arrest, Wanjohi told the press that he had tried calling his wife when she failed to return home, but the call went unanswered.
“I called her, but she didn’t pick up. I went to her workplace, and they told me she left at around 1 p.m. and hasn’t been seen since. I began searching for her and even gave her number to a police officer friend to trace. My mother also said she hadn’t returned,” he said.
According to the family, their ordeal worsened days after Waithera went missing.
They allege that police raided their home and subjected them to harassment in what appeared to be an aggressive search operation.
“They came and harassed us violently. They should not have treated us that way, especially since we had just come from giving our statements. Before we even got home, they were already there. They opened our car and grabbed a bag. One of the officers hit someone. A female officer pulled a pistol on us, and they took all our phones,” said Waithera’s mother, Mary Njeri.
