Police have arrested the main suspect believed to have instigated the notorious mass sexual assault on a woman motorist on Prof Wangari Maathai Road in Nairobi.
Zachariah Nyaora Obadia, who has been on the run for more than a week, was nabbed in Sirare on the Kenya-Tanzania border on Monday. The attack took place last Friday after the motorist was involved in an accident with a boda boda rider. He was injured.
The Director of Criminal investigations on Twitter said officers from the Crime Research and Intelligence Bureau with support from Nairobi DCI regional command arrested Obadia. He had crossed into Tanzania using a 'panya' route.
“Obadiah has been on the run since last week after he escaped our dragnet in Mukuru Kaiyaba, through a sewer duct,” the DCI announced on Twitter.
“Since then, he has been engaging detectives in hide-and-seek games until his arrest on Monday, while communicating with his relatives in Kisii.”
The investigators said cybercrime experts at the DCI National Forensics Laboratory, digital forensics, had placed the suspect at the scene of the crime based on scientific evidence. They then launched a manhunt.
“Using digital forensics, the sleuths working with cybercrime experts at the DCI National Forensic Laboratory placed the thug at the scene of the crime scientifically," DCI said.
"They went after him this afternoon deep in Mukuru Kayaba informal settlement,” police said.
On Monday, detectives realised he had crossed into Tanzania when they alerted their counterparts there.
"He was brought to the Isebania One Stop Border Post for questioning before the team left for Nairobi. The suspect had been on the run and could communicate with his relatives in Kisii while on the move towards the border area," DCI said.
Nyaora was among a group of boda boda riders who confronted and attacked a female driver in the city in a sexual assault that sparked a nationwide crackdown on the operators.
The suspect is said to have been positively identified on the video capturing the sexual assault — his boda boda rider friends filmed the attack.
He was identified by his wife and other relatives at his rural home.
The DCI also issued an ultimatum for his accomplices, about 16 of them, to surrender, saying they too had been identified.
Some 16 suspects were last week Thursday produced in court and police allowed to hold them as they conduct their investigations.
(Edited by V. Graham)
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