According to Mr Waiganjo’s family, the PPO even attended the funeral of Mr Waiganjo’s mother.
The family claimed that former Commissioner of Police Mathew Iteere had appointed Mr Waiganjo to the position of senior superintendant of police.
They claimed that Mr Mbijjiwe was among the senior police officers who attended Mr Waiganjo’s homecoming party following his ‘appointment’.
Mr Waiganjo has been charged in a Naivasha court with robbery with violence,impersonation of a police officer and being in possession of police uniform.
His family, however, insists that he had been working under the Rift Valley PPO for the last four years.
“The boy is not an imposter. He has for the last five years been working as a Kenya Police Reservist under the Rift Valley PPO,” his father, Bishop Ephraim Waiganjo Karianjahi, said at his home in Sunrise Estate in Njoro area of Nakuru County on Friday.
However, when contacted to comment, Mr Iteere denied the allegation.
“I think there is something wrong. Since I became a Commissioner of Police, I have never appointed anyone,” he said.
It also emerged on Friday that Mr Waiganjo had been arrested in Nyeri in 2010 and charged with impersonating a Senior Superintendent of the GSU and obtaining money from parents claiming he could assist their children to get recruited as Administration police officers.
A warrant of arrest issued by a Nyeri court on August 12, 2010 remains in force to date after Mr Waiganjo jumped bail. He had been out on a cash bail of Sh50,000.
Mr Waiganjo had been arraigned in court on March 29, 2010, facing two counts of obtaining money by false pretences and two counts of impersonating a police officer.
Incidentally, the case was withdrawn just a month ago, on December 5, 2012, in the court of the Nyeri Acting Chief Magistrate Mr Shadrack Okato.
However, the magistrate warned that the warrant of arrest against Mr Waiganjo remains in force.
He had denied charges of obtaining Sh100,000 from Mr James Waichoya on October 7, 2008 at Naromoru and Sh50,000 from Mr Daniel Kago on October 8, 2008 at Kiganjo in Nyeri after telling them that he could help get their kin get recruited into the AP.
He also denied two counts of passing himself off as a Senior Superintendent of the GSU.
Bishop Ephraim claimed his 34-year-old son, who dropped out of school in class eight, was first recruited as a Kenya Police Reservist in 2002, was promoted to the position of a police inspector and posted to Kitale.
Mr Waiganjo then lost the job after the then Commissioner of Police Hussein Ali disbanded KPR after he took over office.
“It is Iteere who recalled him and gave him the rank of a Senior Superintendent Of Police. He was posted to Nakuru to work under the PPO.”
However, he could not explain how his son, who has only attended the course of a serviceman at the National Youths Service, managed to climb the ladder and become a senior police officer.
At the same time, Mr Waiganjo has a criminal record. His father admitted that his son had been jailed for six months by a Molo court in 2003 for impersonating a police officer.
Also on Friday, the Rift Valley PPO Mr M’Mbijjiwe explained how the police had nabbed Mr Waiganjo after becoming suspicious of his “frequent conversations with the Police Commissioner”.
Mr M’Mbijiwe said Mr Waiganjo used to communicate with robbers claiming he was talking to the Police Commissioner and was found out after police put a tracker on his mobile phone.
“Everybody believed him because he said he was appointed by the Police Commissioner,” said the police boss.
“Every time his phone rang, he would ask to be excused claiming the call was from the Police Commissioner. The commissioner did not call me as many times, so I started thinking something was amiss,” he added.
Mr M’Mbijjiwe said Mr Waiganjo did not operate from any office.
In Nyeri town on Friday, a complainant in the Nyeri case, Mr Kago, said there had been about 14 people who had been duped by Mr Waiganjo, but some had been refunded their money ranging from Sh50,000 to Sh100,000.
He said that he recognised Mr Waiganjo from the pictures splashed in the media.
Mr Kago now wants Mr Waiganjo to be returned to Nyeri law courts so that charges can be preferred against him afresh.
Mr Waiganjo is convinced that their son differed with senior police officers after the Baragoi massacre where more than 40 police officers were killed by cattle rustlers.
Mr Waiganjo according to his father, who is in charge of Full Gospel Churches of Kenya in Njoro district, has been uneasy since the massacre.
“There is a statement he recorded with the police in Nairobi and most of the senior police officers had warned him against making the statement,” the bishop, who is a retired police officer, said.
The suspect’s sister, Ms Winnie Waiganjo, said over time some senior police officers had developed a close relationship with the accused and even made several visits to their rural home.
“Only malice can be read in the PPO’s assertions that my brother is a complete stranger to him. We even have him on video paying his respects at my mother’s funeral,” she added. - Daily Nation
