Police in Kirinyaga County arrested a man in relation to claims that he had faked his own kidnapping, Citizen TV reported on Tuesday, September 24.
Wilson Maina Wamugunda from Sagana town in Kirinyaga County was reported kidnapped on Tuesday, September 3, but was later found with over Sh40,000 in his possession whose source he could not explain.
Wamugunda, who is a boda boda operator, sent his close friends into panic as his alleged captors kept calling them demanding for ransom.
Money collected from his colleagues was then sent to a phone number supposedly provided by the kidnappers.
The search for Wamugunda took the police three weeks according to Mwea West OCPD Stephen Wenda.
"We have been given seven days to investigate because the facts presented were not adding up. One of the SIM cards we found on him had Ksh40,000," said the OCPD.
The money is being investigated in relation to the ransom that was collected when his friends and colleagues sent cash to the supposed captors.
The police arrested and took him to Sagana Police Station before he was arraigned in court.
A similar case was reported by The Standard in March 2019, when Homabay police arrested a woman who claimed to have been kidnapped.
The 33-year-old mother of three was reported missing at Oyugis Police Station after she withdrew Sh70,000 that was sent by her husband to purchase a piece of land.
The woman disappeared and later came back claiming she had been kidnapped and taken to a remote location by people she could not identify.
Her husband, who had reported to the police, said that he had been sent threatening messages through his wife's number demanding for Sh500,000. The police later found inconsistencies in the woman's story and arrested her.
