Caroline Chepchumba, daughter to Victoria Rotich, a 62-year-old widow, who had supplied 212, 000 bags to National Cereals and Produce Board(NCPB), threatened to ingest poison after she reportedly suffered a mental breakdown.
Chepchumba is among suspects wanted by police for their role, if any, in the National Cereals and Produce Board scandal, in which influential traders allegedly received more than Kshs5 Billion at the expense of genuine farmers.
Rotich lamented that her daughter wanted to ease the pain and humiliation she was going through after her name was put on the public limelight by Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Mwangi Kiunjuri.
“She wanted to take poison on what she termed as frustrations related to the maize issue. My daughter is currently hospitalized because she was branded as a cartel yet the only thing she did was to supply maize to NCPB,” she stated.
“What wrong did my family do to the extent that we are being followed up and down? We did not kill anyone, our actions were only to supply maize to the depots, and we did not import the grains from Mexico,” she was quoted the publication.
This comes after her family was named by the Agriculture CS when he appeared before the National Assembly Agriculture Committee to respond to farmers’ concerns of non-payment for maize supplied.
The CS branded her siblings, Rodney Kimutai, Celestine Chepchirchir alongside their mother, as part of a cartel that fleeced farmers.
An audit revealed that Chepchumba supplied 126,962 bags of maize to the Kisumu NCPB depot and was paid Kshs96 Million. She is still owed Kshs223,383,501. Chepchirchir supplied 219,236 bags, pocketing Kshs333 million, while their brother pocketed Sh2.2 million.
Earlier this week, the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) ordered Rotich, her children and other alleged traders believed to have filled the depots with imported maize, to surrender to police.
However, the seven have so far been released on a police bond of Kshs100,000 each after it was found that the anti-corruption court was not sitting on Tuesday. They will be arraigned on Thursday.
It is however not clear if, by Thursday, Chepchumba would have recovered to appear in court.
A hospital source revealed to the standard that she was fairing on well, “She is good, only that the issue has really affected her. She was fine yesterday (Monday), but after watching herself on TV, she fell back into depression. She is eating, she has a good appetite.”
In a past interview, Rotich, described as a village millionaire, claimed she got a Kshs110 Million loan from the Agricultural Finance Corporation and Kshs30 Million from Oriental Bank, which she used to purchase maize from other farmers. She claimed she had been engaged in maize supplies since 1982.