Police in Naivasha have recovered sugar worth over Sh3m that was stolen while en route from Uganda to the Port of Mombasa.
A vehicle ferrying the sugar from the neighboring country via the port to Seychelles was blocked along the Naivasha-Mai Mahiu road before the highway robbers made away with 600 bags.
Hours later, police managed to recover 261 bags from a lorry ferrying the loot while the rest was found stashed in a residential home along Kinale area.
This came as police accused some drivers of working with highway robbers to stage-manage robberies along the road which is used by heavy commercial vehicles.
In the last couple of months, several trucks ferrying farm produce or industrial equipment have been hijacked by a group of men who ended up offloading the cargo.
According to Naivasha CID boss Adan Mohammed, the driver of the trailer in the latest incident had been arrested hours after the robbery was reported.
Adan noted that they managed to track one of the lorries ferrying part of the sugar and arrested the driver and his co-accused along the Nairobi-Nakuru highway.
“Soon after the robbery was reported we managed to track the lorries that ferried the sugar from the main truck and recovered the sugar,” he said.
Speaking at Naivasha police station, Adan added that a multi-agency team was working to establish if the sugar was in the country legally.
“We have officers from KRA who want to make sure that the sugar has not been diverted into the local market but was destined for Seychelles as claimed by the transporters,” he said.
The senior police officer at the same time called on employers to be wary about persons they were employing as drivers due to a surge in stage-managed robberies.
“We managed to deal with highway robbers a long time ago and we believe that some of the drivers are working in cahoots with the thugs to fleece their bosses,” he said.
Last week, officers manning the highway managed to recover over 500kgs of bhang that was been ferried on a trailer from Western Kenya to Mombasa.
The two suspects have since been arraigned in court over the incident.
