Meru Senator Mithika Linturi and Marianne Kitany are back in court with his estranged wife asking the court to order the police to investigate him for alleged bigamy over multiple marriages.
Kitany said in the application that the Director of Criminal Investigations should commence investigations into alleged illegal practices of bigamy against the Senator for allegedly contracting multiple marriages.
But Ms Kitany said Linturi should also be investigated over alleged falsification, forgery and or faking of court documents and stamps. She further wants the court to order the Attorney General and Registrar of Marriages to produce records of all marriages contracted by Mr Linturi.
In the documents, Ms Kitany maintained that they did plan, actualize and attended a wedding ceremony at his home in Meru. She further stated that that the Senator did carry out an official customary marriage with her, as well as meeting the family, paying dowry, gifting her parents as well as carrying out all customary preconditions.
She said through lawyer Danstan Omari that Mr Linturi produced legal divorce documents to the effect that he was not a married man, before their union.
“That the defendant herein, if indeed did not have any capacity to marry, committed the criminal act of bigamy, an offence under Section 171 of the Penal Code of Kenya,” she said.
She revealed that the two met in 2013 while she was working at the Deputy President William Ruto’s office, as the Chief of Staff.
She said he had come to see Mr Ruto being a newly elected Member of Parliament for Igembe South and she was instructed to assist him with his requests.
“From around February 2014, we grew closer and we started dating during which period he would bring me flowers and visit me frequently at which time he claimed he was single and unmarried,” she said.
They later agreed that it was important for his family and himself to have all his children, who are from the different mothers who range in age 5 and 18 years to move, to move in with them.
She said that by September of 2016, all the children including the youngest were now fully her responsibility and out of it, she instantly became a mother of 6 children.
“I made each of the children and defendant feel comfortable and at home with lots of love and understanding each one of them appreciating that they all had grown up from different backgrounds,” she said.
Ms Kitany said she has collected sufficient evidence to prove that the alleged acts of forgery and fraud were all done by Mr Linturi and with heavy prejudice to her interests. “The allegations of fraud, forgery and perjury are serious criminal offences and it behooves the Honorable Court to arrest illegalities and protect the status quo, especially considering the said actions are being undertaken by a person in public office,” she said.
She introduced Linturi to her children when the schools closed at Sopa Lodge, Great Rift Valley Lodge during the Easter holiday in the year 2014 and Linturi later introduced his children to her in Nairobi around the same period after our earlier meeting with her children.
“On or around May or June 2014, we agreed to move in together to my home in Kileleshwa while he still had a home along Ngong Road and on or around August 2014 we organized for our children to travel together with our inlaws Billy and Dorothy Onyango on holiday to Zanzibar and they were to help us with bonding his and my children. During this holiday the children spent a lot of time together which drew them very close,” state court documents.
She claims several issues began when the Defendant after sometime started drifting away from family responsibility and his personal commitment to me and the relationship and this has put a lot of strain in the relationship and family as I have had to take up responsibilities of both father and mother role to the children both emotionally and financially.
“His absenteeism escalated to a point where even his last born son Dylan who was 8 years old at the time and who lovingly called me mum, to keep asking for his father and even counted from the last time he had seen the Defendant,” adds.
Kitany further state that, these actions by the Defendant tormented the children considering to add insult upon injury, he would travel and only bring gifts for only the children he had sired.
” I confronted him on this issue of separating children who were already sensitive with the living conditions and he disappeared and stayed a long time without coming back at home,” further state.
“He had a habit of leaving the matrimonial home, switching his phone off for extensive and inexplicable periods of time and soon as he returned home, if I confronted him, the same would bring up arguments,”.
She adds that after finishing constructing and furnishing the house in Meru and Nairobi, she put all the children in good responsible schools of good value and character and took up her responsibility as a wife to reduce heavy expenses of renting a home to constructing our own home that would accommodate comfortably all the children.
She said another issue that caused our relationship strain was that his daughter did not perform well in school and was far away from home and in July 2016 had to be returned back to Kenya at the command of the Defendant who had given up on her by that time.
” I do recall that on one occasion in 2017, while we were living in rented Runda home, I had secured a very short leave from work for four days, travelled urgently to Dubai alone to secure materials for the construction materials,” says Kitany.
She said after she landed in Dubai, Linturi called her to inform her that he had found their daughter with drugs, took her to Gigiri police station and left her there, a young girl at the age of 21and proceeded to Meru to campaign, abandoning her.
“Our daughter stayed in the cells for 4 days until I returned from my trip to Dubai, where I had her released after pleading with the Defendant and the DCIO of Gigiri Police Station and she was taken to a rehabilitation center run by a friend known as Mututho which rehab center is called John Mututho Empowerment Center also known as JOMEC,” says Kitany.
