A blow-by-blow account of how Eastleigh woman exploited Hafsa Lukman and planned her kidnapping

NAIROBI, Kenya, Jun 27 -Its exactly one week since Hafsa Mohammed Lukman was rescued from the clutches of two criminals, who are part of a gang in Nairobi’s vast Kayole area.

For 5 days, Hafsa experienced what no human being should ever be put through. Forcefully ripped apart from her family, tortured and deprived of food, subjected to daily torment and humiliation, all this, a series of horrific events instigated by someone who gained her trust and masqueraded as her friend only to at the end reveal her ulterior motives.

Though the physical scars of what she endured for five days, continue to haunt her, she says that they are the embodiment of her tragic experience simply imprinted on her body.

Events that led to her abduction surprises even her, she says, admitting she never saw it coming.

How her namesake, Hafsa Abdi, who was also coincidentally reported missing, but now in police custody and is set to face kidnapping charges, gained her trust in a twisted ploy to commit the unthinkable remains a puzzle.

“We were neighbours but we didn’t know each other that well. She took my phone number and told me she want us to do business together. She convinced me and I accepted,” Hafsa Lukman said, during an interview with Shahidi News.

Hafsa Abdi, the would be kidnapper, is said to have first met Hafsa Lukman back in 2019. 

Their first encounter was through their mothers, who had a cordial relationship and it was there and then when they became friendly with each other.

For the two years they knew each other, Hafsa Lukman now in retrospect says, her would be kindapper’s  intentions seemed to have been to exploit her business networks and swindle her of her money.

“She told me she was in the watermelon business and wanted me to lend her some money, because at the time I also wanted to explore other businesses and I agreed. As time went on, she kept on telling me to give her more and more money…offering one excuse after the other, ”said Hafsa Lukman.

By the time the initial transaction was complete, Hafsa had lended her Sh700,000. 

She told Shahidi News that every time she inquired about when she would receive her money, Hafsa Abdi kept telling her that she was waiting for the harvest season and that her investment would pay off at the end.

This never happened.

On the eve of her kidnapping, she again called her and pitched yet another business prospect and invited her to Kayole. 

Though initially reluctant, they briefly met at her shop in Kamukunji and as Hafsa asked whether she could bring someone along, she refused.

“I told her I was tired and that she should come to Eastleigh, she said her mother was not aware she was in Nairobi, and that she hadn’t seen her in three days and she wanted to avoid seeing her,” she narrated.

CCTV footage seen by Shahidi News shows that they left the business complex at around 5:16pm and headed to Kayole.

While in Kayole, Hafsa was shown a storage room that would be sold for profit, suspiciously however, she did not have the keys to the store and after 10 minutes, she (Hafsa Abdi) is seen conversing with someone via text message.

“At 6:40pm, I told her we should pray Maghrib (evening prayers) and she said that she had not prayed at 4pm therefore she could not pray. All these were just excuses. At this point I realized she had other plans, and shortly after two people grabbed me by the neck and started beating me,” Lukman said.

She recalled the horrific incident when the two criminals then forced a handful of saw dust down her mouth, followed by a piece of cloth, as they then proceeded to bind her hands and legs.

She was then put inside an empty water tank and moved to a different location.

“When being held, there was loud music in the room, they told me not to be concerned and that they were in communication with my family and that all they wanted was money,” Lukman added.

“For five days, I was deprived of food and water, while I was there I knew she (Hafsa Abdi) was behind everything.”

Due to the convenience of having similar names, Hafsa Abdi is then said to have taken her national identity card and withdrew Sh658,000 from her bank account without being detected.

An investigation meanwhile is ongoing to establish how her money was withdrawn without bank officials raising the red flag.

“I suspect because I kept asking for my money she planned the whole abduction and maybe intended to kill me,” a shaken Lukman said.

On June 20, the morning she was rescued, Hafsa, the entrepreneur from Kamukuji was left on her own with her captors leaving the previous night after threatening that they would be back to get what was ‘rightfully’ theirs.

The gang had initially demanded a Sh5 million ransom.

They constantly kept sending videos and images of Hafsa to her family threatening to end her life if the ransom was not sent.

She recalls though she had anticipated the worst, her faith in God kept her hopeful that she would surmount her challenges. 

In a moment of quick thinking, she shouted while crying out for help. Her prayers were answered.

Children playing outside the building she was being held captive, shortly after called out for help, after Hafsa told them to,”call your parents and tell them I am being held captive,”

They shortly after returned with their parents who attempted to break her out to no avail. Police officers from the Kayole Police Station then arrived at the scene and managed to open the doors.

Detectives recorded her statement and she was then rushed to hospital for treatment.

“I never believed I would die, I kept on praying and they told me if I dare shouted they would kill me, so on that Sunday, I felt a level of thirst I never felt before and I thought to myself, these people would probably kill me and my family would never find my body, so I decided to shout out for help,” she said.

Zakaria Mohammed Lukam, her elder brother said that life is slowly getting back to normal, albeit the trauma of the events that led to her kidnapping. 

“We just thank God that we found our sister alive and she is slowly but surely on the road to full recovery. Last week we anticipated the worst but our faith in God kept us together,” he said.

Early Sunday detectives from the Crime Research and intelligence Bureau arrested the main suspects in her kidnapping; Hafsa Abdi and her boyfriend Jackson Njogu at a lodging in Kinangop.

The third suspect, Cyrus Ndung’u Njogu was arrested last week.

The suspects will be arraigned tomorrow and charged with kindapping.