Puzzle of three Kenyan women, foreign jails and drug trafficking ring

Margaret Nduta was sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Vietnam.[Courtesy] On the afternoon of October 24, 2023, taxi driver Peter Shakava received a call from his regular customer, mechanic Obeid Zaid, requesting a ride to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA). Although Shakava operated around Kibera, the vehicle he used belonged to Ida Mwayi. The two negotiated the fare, settling at Sh2,000, with Obeid saying the client would make a short trip. Fifteen minutes later, Obeid called again, confirming that the passenger had accepted the price. He informed Shakava that the pickup would be the following day at 9.30 am from his garage near Langata Link Road. In his testimony, Shakava told Kahawa Law Court magistrate Njeri Thuku that two women showed up, one of them carrying a medium-sized pink travel bag. The second woman was Catherine Eshikutu, who paid the fare in full via M-Pesa before bidding her farewells. Shakava said the passenger he carried was a stranger, and their trip to JKIA was marked by silence. He dropped the woman at Terminal 1A around 10am, wished her a safe flight and drove off. Two months later, on December 8, the vehicle's owner, Mwayi, received a call from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), asking to speak to Shakava. She later instructed him to meet an officer at the airport on December 11. Shakava testified that at first, he could not recall who had sent the fare, but after reviewing photos and his M-Pesa statement, he identified Eshikutu. He explained to the officer that October 24 was the first time he had interacted with her. Obeid, however was his regular customer, as he often drove him to town to source motorbike spare parts. By then, Shakava had known Obeid for almost a year. According to his testimony, Obeid and Eshikutu were related. He said that she was Obeid's a sister-in-law, having previously been married to his brother, Hikmat Zaid. He added that Eshikutu had called seeking transport to JKIA but did not disclose who the passenger was, only that it was someone she knew. Shakava noted that while she occasionally called him to arrange taxis on the day of pick up, he merely saw her with the female passenger and the two did not speak. He stated that she occasionally called him to arrange taxis, but on the day Shakava picked up the female passenger, he saw Eshikutu with her, although they did not speak. He denied knowing that Eshikutu was involved in drugs trade. On December 28, 2023, Eshikutu presented herself on the Kenya-Ethiopia border, on transit to the Abiy Ali Mohamed-led nation. Little did she know that her name was in the watch list of a syndicate linked to narcotics trafficking involving Kenyans arrested in Asia. We can now reveal that Eshikutu is the key to solving the puzzle of how Margaret Nduta Macharia, a Kenyan languishing in Vietnam jail, ended up with two kilos of narcotics. Nduta was initially on death row. However, Kenya's Foreign Affairs ministry pleaded for mercy on her behalf. It culminated with the Vietnamese Supreme Court, sitting in Ho Chi Minh City, reducing her sentence to life. Foreign Affairs Principal Secretary Korir Sing'oei told The Saturday Standard the government was exploring diplomatic avenues to have the 37-year-old come back home. Eshikutu was the last person to be seen with her, and the crucial link is a Sh270 million transfer via M-Pesa. The transaction was done in several tranches. Back at the Ethiopia border crossing, Immigration Officer Phillip Erupe testified that at around 9am, he received Eshikutu's travel documents for verification. He confirmed that her passport was valid and she was not carrying anything illegal. However, when her photo and biometric data were scanned, the system flagged her. "It was a 100 per cent positive identification," he told the court, adding that the DCI's anti-narcotics unit had placed her on the watch list. Erupe immediately informed his supervisor, Thomas Kyalo, who escorted Eshikutu back across the border and handed her over to authorities. Kyalo confirmed Erupe's story. He said that there was a stop order from DCI, which indicated that Eshikutu was involved in trafficking narcotics to Brazil and Asia. He said that she had travelled to Laos, in Asia but there was no information if she was in Brazil or India. Eshikutu was handed over to police officer Leonard Arome, who arranged for her transfer to Nairobi. He testified that two days after Christmas, she boarded the Moyale Star Executive Bus, where he arrested her. Arome added that he did not conduct a search on her since she was a woman. Before being transferred to Nairobi, Eshikutu was presented before the Moyale Law Courts, then handed over to Inspector Peter Karanja of the Transnational Organised Crime Unit (TOCU). She was later detained at Muthaiga Police Station before being handed to the JKIA anti-narcotics unit. On the eve of 2024, officer James Wafula picked her up. Wafula told the court that during interrogation, he established that her accomplice had already been arrested in Seychelles. It later emerged that the accomplice was one Stella Wangari Wairimu, a 30-year-old Kenyan who was arrested a day before Eshikutu dispatched the second woman. She was found in possession of 678.59 grams of cocaine concealed in 36 cylindrical packets. At the time of the arrest, the packets were inserted in her private parts and boarded flight KQ250 from Nairobi. She pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison on June 3, 2025, by Seychelle's Supreme Court Judge Alexandra Madeleine. Wangari was arrested after the Seychelles authorities at the airport decided to do a random body scan on 30 passengers from the flight. The images showed that she had something abnormal, which prompted the police to search and question her. She told the investigators that it was her first time in Seychelles for an eight-day vacation at the Chateau Bleu Self Catering, located at Anse Aux Pins, Mahe. She, however, denied having anything illegal. Wangari eventually removed one of the packets from her private parts which then prompted the officers to take her to the Victoria Hospital for a further scan. This time, the images showed that she had inserted multiple objects inside her rectum. The following day, on October 24, 2023, she excreted 35 other packets, which, upon analysis, were found to be cocaine. In her plea for leniency, she said that she is a single mother of three children, and two of them were living with her sister back in Kenya, while the third one was born during her pre-detention in Seychelles. At the time she was being sentenced, the third born was 10-months-old. A pre-sentencing report presented in court showed that Wangari was motivated to be a drug mule by poverty and financial constraint. "The convict was thus vulnerable and succumbed to manipulation into believing she would be transporting 'black market medicine' to Seychelles as opposed to controlled drugs," the report read in part. Wangari revealed she was introduced to a drug lord called ' Chris ' by a woman named Catherine. This Catherine, it now emerges, is Eshikutu. At the time, she said, she was desperately looking for full-time employment to make ends meet. Her lawyer in Seychelles argued that she had been used as a mule and was a first-time offender. Wangari claimed that she had been subjected to death threats together with her family from Chris and Catherine. In Seychelles, importation of controlled drugs carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and a fine of SCR 1 million (Sh8.7 million). The minimum, on the other hand, is 20 years for drugs such as cocaine. Justice Madelene directed that she serves seven years after deducting the time she had spent behind bars and was entitled to remission. Back in Kenya, Corporal Lilian Munyinyi told the court that she subjected Eshikutu's phone to forensic examination to extract her WhatsApp messages and communication. She said that Eshikutu's messages included persons such as Chris, Jadu and Nugu, and were about drug-related matters including arrests, bribery and travel details. At the same time, she retrieved M-Pesa transactions between Eshikutu and Wangari and travel documents indicating Seychelles and New Delhi. The other data retrieved from her phone was photos which showed substances on weighing scales. Munyinyi argued that Wangari's itinerary aligned with suspected trafficking activities. She, however, told the court that she was unaware of the links between Wangari and Eshikutu. In addition, she asserted that she found on the phone articles about a Kenyan woman who was arrested in Seychelles. Another officer, Jonathan Limo said he was tasked with analyzing three Safaricom mobile numbers. One of them was registered in Eshikutu's name, while the second one was Wangari's, and the third one was Shakava's. He said that Eshikutu sent Shakava Sh2,000 and which confirmed the taxi driver's story that he drove Wangari to JKIA. At the same time, he stated that Kenya government sought mutual legal assistance from Seychelles, which revealed that drugs were involved. It emerged that Wangari spent the night at at Eshikutu's home before travel. In her response, she denied knowing Wangari's involvement in drugs trafficking. She instead claimed that they knew each other as sex workers. She, however, admitted talking to Chris, but claimed that Wangari had stolen from him and one other person called Fally. According to her, it was Fally who offered her a job in drug trafficking, but she allegedly declined owing to low pay. Pressed further, she claimed that she knew where Wangari would stay in Seychelles but asserted that it was just a matter of caring about her well-being. Eshikutu testified that she was involved in silver business, not narcotics, and clarified that references to drugs in her chats were either misunderstood or related to conversations she did not act upon. The woman also admitted to googling drug-related arrests out of curiosity. Now, in her M-Pesa, there was some Sh270 sent in tranches to Margaret Nduta Macharia from June 26 to June 30, 2023, daily. The next transaction, according to the court record, was on July 19, 2023. At the same time, Eshikutu's passport showed that she had left Kenya on June 30, 2023. The document also had an exit stamp from Ethiopian Immigration on July 5, 2023, and she had a single-entry visa to travel to Laos, where she was to enter on July 18, 2023. Curiously enough, some 494 kilometres at Ho Chi Minh City Airport, from where Eshikutu was, Nduta was arrested in the same month. Magistrate Njeri said that Eshikutu knew if she was the last person to see Nduta. "She and her conscience will battle it out," said Njeri. Nduta, born in Murang'a, was to face death by lethal injection after being found guilty of trafficking 2 kilos of cocaine. The Vietnamese government passed a strict law due to the high number of drug users. It is estimated that out of 230,000 drug users, at least 45 per cent are between 12 and 30 years old. Amnesty International Executive Director Houghton Irungu, in his opinion on April 1, 2015, said that she was lured to be a mule. Irungu indicated that a person risks death if caught trafficking over 100 grams of drugs. According to him, there may be as many as 1,200 persons in Vietnam facing death. "Both Kenya, Ethiopia and Vietnam must increase public awareness campaigns, strengthen customs controls and transnational cooperation to stop trafficking networks from preying on economically vulnerable men and women. Efforts must focus on tracking and jailing the manufacturers, financiers and corrupt state officials who coordinate this deadly trade," said Irungu. In a world largely controlled by men, accounting for 90 per cent, Nduta's story remains a small part of a drug-smuggling syndicate targeting women. However, there is a common link that connects her to Wangari, especially regarding Eshikutu, cocaine and financial dealings. Nduta claimed that she was on her way to the Middle East in search of a job. She boarded a bus to Addis Ababa, where she claimed an agent handed her a bag to replace the one, she had. The unanswered questions still lingering are whether Eshikutu and Nduta travelled together to Addis, and if she is the agent whom Nduta was referring to. At the same time, who are Chris, Fally, Nugu and Jadu?

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