@Yobramos4
In the leafy suburbs of Nyali in Mombasa county, unscrupulous businessmen have either hired or bought residential houses and turned them into shisha dens and brothels.
Some acquire business permits in the name of restaurants.
From the outside, one would suspect nothing, but a keen eye would notice high-end vehicles get into the compounds, mostly from 7pm onwards.
The compounds look small from the outside, but once you get in, it is another world and they can hold as many as 20 vehicles.
This is what undercover cops observed on Saturday night as they mingled with moneyed patrons in two of the dens raided by a multi-agency team. The raid was led by the National Campaign Against Alcohol and Drug Abuse CEO Anthony Omerikwa.
In one of the dens known as ‘Hideout’, the Star counted 15 vehicles parked in the compound, two of them, a Toyota Prado and Hilux Double Cab, still new with nylon seat covers and KD number plates.
Thirty-eight patrons were arrested, caught unawares. Some fled. Of the 38, nine were women in hijabs.
A woman in hijab, hid under the Hilux Double Cab, for more than an hour, only to be found by a hawk-eyed DCI officer.
Some of the patrons were making merry and doing other businesses in their cars.
Sex, it seems, is a normal activity in the joints as there are special rooms for those who are willing to engage.
Police found used and unused condoms.
Two of the patrons tried to avoid arrest by pretending to be a journalist and a police officer and mingled with the journalists and police officers in the melee.
Their mission failed.
A woman, in a buibui, refused to board the police lorry saying her pressure had shot up.
She had to be given ‘special’ treatment together with the manager of the joint, who had a problem with the right leg and walked with a limp.
These two were driven to the Nyali police station in a police Land Cruiser.
At a second joint, codenamed ‘Escape’, eight more patrons were arrested, one found hiding under a Toyota Probox.
However, there were only two vehicles in Escape compound, as police concluded they must have been tipped off.
Some mobile phones were found being charged at a table.
A hole was found along the fence, through which, preliminary reports indicated, they must have escaped.
However, the in charge at Escape said a lorry had on Friday picked from the joint hundreds of the shisha bongs, an indication they must have known Nacada was around ready to raid the place.
Omerikwa said they were tipped off of the dens and meticulously planned their raids.
“Shisha has been banned since 2017. We were able to apprehend 38 suspects including the proprietor and the manager,” Omerikwa said.
He said from Hideout they collected 47 shisha bongs, more than 700 shisha ingredients which will be subjected to tests in the Government Chemist to establish their contents, syringes, khat, bhang-like substances, among others.
“I would like to urge proprietors, the law is very clear, if you have an establishment you need to operate your enterprise within the law. Shisha is banned,” Omerikwa said.
He said they will work to ensure that alcohol and drug abuse is diminished to the extent that it is no longer a threat to society.
“Some of these dens are breeding grounds for criminal enterprise. Some of these places are where our young people are inducted into alcohol and drug abuse,” he said.
The raids, he said, is the beginning of a long journey that will be undertaken across the country to rid the country of alcoholism and drug abuse.
At Hideout, Omerikwa said, the licence they were shown expired in August 2017 and it was for a restaurant.
“That in itself is a violation and we will work closely with the counties to ensure that such places are properly licensed and do what they are licensed to do,”
He said Nacada will collaborate with the Mombasa government to establish the circumstances under which the licence was given.
The two joints, Hideout and Escape, were dirty and dilapidated, as if they had been abandoned.