A 35-year-old woman from Nairobi was arrested on Sunday, April 9, by the customs authority in Hong Kong, China, for smuggling cocaine pills worth Ksh15,328,959 (HK$900,000).
According to the Hong Kong authorities, the woman was smuggling 67 cocaine pills weighing about 1kg inside her body.
The woman, who had travelled from Nairobi through Addis Ababa in Ethiopia raised the suspicion of the officers who questioned the purpose of her visit.
The customs authorities noted that their alarm was raised after they realised that the hotel the 35-year-old claimed to be booked at did not exist.
Further, the authorities noted that the reservation information on the woman’s documents did not match the details of the length of her stay.
The woman, reportedly an information technology manager, was then handed over to the customs’ drug investigation group for further probe.
She was taken to a hospital under state security and an ejection process was carried out to retrieve the cocaine.
A doctor who believed there were more drugs inside her body ordered her to stay in the hospital for further medical surveillance.
She was scheduled to face prosecution and appear in the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Tuesday, April 11.
In a separate incident, a Kenyan woman was arrested at the Mumbai Airport for smuggling cocaine worth Ksh72 million in October 2022.
According to a customs official, the seized cocaine was found ingeniously concealed in a special cavity made in her footwear after a thorough search was conducted.
A total of 490 grams of cocaine was recovered from the woman before she was arrested and sent to judicial custody.
