Keroche CEO Tabitha Karanja almost moved into tears on Tuesday as she testified into her daughter’s inquest Tecra Muigai at the Milimani Law Courts.
Tecra died while on holiday in Lamu with her boyfriend Omar Lali.
A teary Tabitha told the court that what pains her is the fact that Lali exploited her daughter financially citing that bank statements from Tecra’s account showed she transferred Ksh1 million to Lali.
All this according to Tabitha, was done in just five months.
“He was after my daughter’s hard-earned income and when she realized that she could not give him money anymore, he killed her,” Tabitha said in her testimony.
Every detail of the transaction was tabled in court and scrutinized as she held onto the fact that Lali killed her daughter when she couldn’t offer him more money.
Bank statements indicate that the late Tecra first transferred Ksh150,000 to Lali on August 19, 2019 before transferring a similar amount on the following day.
Eight days later, she transferred another Ksh150,000.
In October the same year, she transferee a total of Ksh100,000 and Ksh300,000 in November.
Between December 2019 and March 2020, Tecra did not send money to Lali and when she did in early March, she first sent Ksh60,000 to Lali and then another Ksh80,000 on March 13, 2020.
Tabitha said that among the things police found in Lamu at a house she had been living with Lali were unsigned bank slips which showed she had just sent him money.
Tabitha further told the inquest being presided over by Magistrate Zainabu Abdul that she had always disapproved Lali’s relationship with her daughter because he was too old for her.
“I told her that she had send the wrong photo [because] the guy was too old for her,” Tabitha confessed.
But Tecra was in love and she tried to explain to her mother that the old man was the one who had stolen her heart.
“At some point, she told us to stop [discussing] that topic,” Tabitha recalled.
She told the court that Tecra would have been home were it not for Covid-19 pandemic which locked her down in Lamu.
They decided to wait for things to calm down for her to travel back home because she disapproved travelling back through public means.
Speaking of how she learnt about her daughter’s accident, Tabitha said she found her husband talking to Lali on phone and he informed them that Tecra was in the hospital.
She said this is when she learnt that her daughter was unwell and that Lali told them that she was induced by doctors because she was in deep pain.
“It was not true what Omar was alleging. The injuries were severe so we reported to the police. The doctor told us that if it was a fall, there would have been scars in other parts of the body. She had two cracks on the head,” explained Tabitha.
Disapproving reports by Lali that Tecra fell off a flight of stairs and that she was allegedly drunk, Tabitha said that doctors who examined her disapproved this theory.
Tecra had not had a drink at the time of the accident.
