Fresh details emerge in mysterious death of Vanitah Nikesh in city temple

By Joshua Cheloti Homicide experts have taken over investigations into the death of a 27-year-old woman whose body was discovered hanging from a window grill at a city apartment, on the morning of April 3, 2022. Vanitah Nikesh’s lifeless body was first seen by neighbors through a window suspended by the neck using a piece of cloth, at the house at the Swaminarayan Temple flats, along the Southern bypass, off Langata road. Security guards manning the premises broke the door to the flat and found the deceased’s lifeless body hanging on a piece of clothing, as the woman’s 2-month-old infant lay on an adjacent bed. The woman’s husband Nikesh Harji Shanghani, was not in the house at the time of the discovery, and the first responders immediately notified police officers based at Langata police station, who immediately arrived at the scene. Shanghani and the deceased lived as husband and wife and had been blessed with three children, one 4-year-old boy and two twins who were barely 2-months-old. Preliminary investigations indicated that the woman had taken her own life, due to mistreatment by the husband who it was alleged was a drunkard and rarely provided for the family. The man is said to have returned home late that night, but left at around 6.00 am after a heated argument and proceeded to an establishment at Galleria Mall, where he continued drinking with a friend. It also emerged that on a fateful morning, the deceased had handed their 4-year-old son to her next-door neighbor and asked her to proceed with him to the temple before she joined them. The twin sister to the 2-month-old baby found in the bedroom was said to be with the woman’s mother-in-law, who lived a few blocks away. Multiple witnesses, who were interviewed immediately after the body’s discovery, indicated that the husband Nikesh Harji Shangani, 32, had brought the deceased into the country from India, a few years ago after which they lived as husband and wife. Following the mysterious death, the woman’s body was cremated the following day April 4, 2022, at the Kariokor crematorium in accordance with the Hindu culture and religion. However, serious questions emerged afterward about the circumstances leading to the woman’s death, opening a fresh can of worms in what could have been a comedy of errors by the first responders to the scene of the incident. After a forensic examination of the scene as later demonstrated by cyber forensics and imaging experts, homicide specialists could not rule out the possibility of foul play due to the position of the body and the knot patterns of the clothing that the deceased was found hanging on. On Friday, April 22, 2022, forensic teams from the Crime Scene Investigations Unit, Imaging & Acoustics, and the Homicide team went back to the scene and discovered that CCTV footage recorded on the day of the murder at an adjacent temple had been deleted, pointing to a likely conspiracy into the death of the woman. The deceased’s husband was placed behind bars last evening, as the homicide detectives conclude investigations into the woman’s mysterious death. “Consequently, the Director DCI George Kinoti has instituted far-reaching changes at the Langata DCI command, based on how this incident was handled,” DCI said in a statement on their Twitter handle.