The arrest of a second female suspect with cocaine in Moyale highlights the increasing role of women in trafficking hard drugs.

Caroline Thiunguri Kabonyi was arrested at Odda roadblock on Saturday after police became suspicious when she resisted attempts to be frisked.

The 45-year-old was among passengers in a Toyota Probox headed to Marsabit. While the other passengers complied, Thiunguri refused to be frisked, prompting the officers to arrest her.

She was escorted to Moyale Sub-County Referral Hospital for thorough screening that led discovery of eight pellets of cocaine weighing 414 grams hidden in her private parts with an estimated street value of Sh1.6 million.

The suspect was taken to Moyale Police Station awaiting to be arraigned in court on Tuesday. Police claimed the woman is a notorious drug trafficker.

This came a day after another woman identified as Jane Njeri Muigai was arrested in Moyale after 294 grams of Cocaine were found concealed in her private parts.

Njeri was arrested at a roadblock mounted by a multi-agency team deployed to the border point to crackdown on traffickers smuggling drugs into the capital city.

The team intercepted a Nairobi-bound bus that the 28-year-old had boarded on Friday. Njeri is being held at Moyale Police Station.

Even as security agents intensify the crackdown locally, a number of women have in the recent past been arrested abroad while trafficking drugs with the latest incident involving a 43-year-old woman in India who was allegedly attempting to sneak cocaine into the Asian country.

Emily Kanini Rhoda was arrested in April at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International (CSMI) Airport in Mumbai soon after landing from Nairobi via Doha. The cocaine, weighing 1,789 grams, was discovered in her bag.

Kanini’s arrest came as Margaret Nduta Macharia faces the death sentence in Vietnam, after being found guilty of trafficking more than two kilograms of cocaine. Nduta was arrested in July 2023 while on transit to Laos.

The 37-year-old claimed she had been hired by a man identified only as John in Kenya to deliver the consignment, whose content she had no idea about.