Waweru, who works as a driver, was walking to his parent’s home in Ngong on Monday last week when a car stopped a few metres ahead and one of the occupants beckoned him. “There were three men inside. They greeted me and asked for directions, and I was glad to help. The conversation was very cordial, so, when they offered me a ride, I obliged.”
No sooner had he entered the car than everything went blank. He woke up on a bed much later, probably the following day, neither knowing where he was nor how he got there. A man wearing a black balaclava sat on the bedside, scrolling through his captive’s phone. “He demanded that I show him the contacts of my father, mother, brothers and other relatives,” he said.
His captors used his phone to send text messages (SMS) to his parents, and occasionally allowed him to receive phone calls from his parents during which he was ordered to plead with them to cooperate with the captors lest he be killed.
The abductors instructed the father, Mr Kagwari Waweru, to send the money in three instalments to his son’s phone via M-Pesa. The Nation later learnt that the money was withdrawn in Ongata Rongai and Bungoma.
After ten days of horror, he was released along Nairobi’s River Road, and told to walk away without looking back. The captors had also seized Waweru’s national identity card, and ordered him to scribble his signature and one of them is believed to have used it to withdraw money from an M-Pesa agent.