House girl sought after Sh5m lost in Nyachae's home

A servant in former Cabinet minister Simeon Nyachae's house has gone missing after Sh5 million disappeared from the politician's Nairobi home.

Police said they had yet to arrest the woman identified as Lillian Maina. She was said to have disappeared on October 7.

The money was in a safe in the bedroom of one of Mr Nyachae's wives, Grace Wamuyu. Ms Wamuyu had left the money in the house as she travelled to the UK to visit the ailing Nyachae.

The house girl's daughter was arrested and presented before court yesterday.

The police asked the court to allow them to detain Grace Mbugua so that she could say where her mother was.

Detectives claimed Ms Mbugua picked up her mother from Mr Nyachae's residence and escorted her to Kitengela.

The officers wanted her detained for a week to enable them to finalise investigations, but a Nairobi court rejected the request.

“Does she have an obligation to show the police where the suspect is? Is she an accomplice?” Milimani Law Courts Magistrate Kennedy Cheruyiot said before setting Mbugua free unconditionally.

The prosecution claimed Mbugua knew the whereabouts of her mother.

The prosecution wanted her detained so she could help police to trace her mother. However, the magistrate dismissed the application saying it lacked merit. Mr Cheruyiot said there were no compelling reasons to deny Mbugua her freedom.

Nyachae's wife reported that she opened the safe on September 28 but forgot to put back the safe keys.

On September 30, she travelled to the UK and left her four employees to take care of the home in Spring Valley.

Wamuyu and her husband returned to Kenya on October 7, after he was discharged from hospital.

The following day, Wamuyu said, she could not find the key to the safe. She said she checked where she usually kept the key but it was not there.

She went to the safe and found it in the keyhole. She said she opened the safe and found that all the money she had kept there, some in foreign currency, was missing.

She reported the matter to Parklands Police Station after which detectives visited the scene. By then, Ms Maina had disappeared.

"We started investigations and Ms Mbugua was arrested on October 29 on the strength of phone calls data which showed she had picked up the suspect and escorted her to Kitengela,” the police said in an affidavit.

The affidavit added: "The police believe the young woman has information on the whereabouts of the key suspect." They argued that it would be difficult to arrest her mother and recover the stolen money if she was released.

The magistrate ruled that the subject had no business showing the police where her mother was hiding. As a matter of fact, the magistrate said, she had a right to remain silent, a caution she ought to have been given at the time of her arrest.

Cheruyioit said he wondered why police wanted to “visit the sins of a parent on her child”.