Tania Margaret Omondi, Kidnapped on , November 21,2011. Photo/NATION

Five months ago, two women picked a five-year-old girl from Umoja housing estate in Nairobi and took her to an unknown destination.
Since then, the girl has not been seen and her family has not known peace.
The minor, Tania Margaret Omondi, was kidnapped from the lawful guardianship of her parents Guytan Omondi Otieno and Beatrice Mogolo Ndege from Umoja Inner Core on November 21 last year.
Tania, the last born in a family of two, was in baby class at Umoja Springboard Academy. She was grabbed while playing outside their home.
The family has not rested since then and has tirelessly appealed to anybody with any information regarding the girl’s whereabouts to assist them and the police with information.
Despite the mental anguish and anxiety that has characterised their lives for the past five months, the parents are optimistic and prayerful.
“I’m confident that my daughter is alive and is somewhere with someone,” says the father.
The morning Tania was abducted, the family had breakfast together.
“Before I left for work, she asked me to look for another school for her,” recalls the father.
The same night, the parents received messages from two Safaricom lines. The callers said they had the girl in their custody and demanded a total of Sh2 million in ransom. They wanted the parents to send Sh70,000 daily to each of the numbers issued. Police launched investigations and later arrested five suspects in Nairobi and Siaya.
Tellingly, they found Tania’s pictures in the suspects’ laptops and the contacts of the girl’s parents. Three of them — John Oyamo Wanetia, Paul Otieno Gaya and Bill Clinton Mboya — were then arraigned before the Makadara Chief Magistrate’s court on January 23.
By the time the suspects were arrested, the kidnappers had already received almost a million shillings in ransom through M-Pesa.
The case took another twist when the main suspect in the case, John Oyamo Wanetia, went missing after he was allegedly grabbed by unknown people in Umoja on February 21.
The man had been released from custody on a cash bail of Sh150,000 on February 3 but was allegedly picked by men in civilian clothes suspected to be police officers who drove him away in a car with Tanzanian registration numbers. Since then, he has never been seen.According to Tania’s mother, the daughter was their most beautiful gift. “Although she was fast outgrowing our laps she could never outgrow our hearts,” the mother said.