BY SAM ALFAN.
Over 300 members of Maili Saba Mwengenye Youth Self Group have been given one month to vacate a contested property in Embakasi within 30 days or face eviction.
Environment and Land Court Judge Lucy Maina found the 40-acre land belongs to Unity 45 Housing Corporative Society limited.
“An order of eviction of the Defendants (Peter Kimuli, Korir Kamuyu, Sammy Kamande and Peter Mwaga (as chairman, secretary, treasurer and patron of Maili Saba Mwengenye Youth Self Group) and interested parties (Geoffrey Awour suing on behalf of Dorice Owour, Timothy Kibanga and Joshua Muthusi) from the suit property L. R No. 11531/9 is hereby issued, any person occupation of the suit of land is given 30 days to vacate the said land,” ordered Judge Main in the decision.
Judge Maina issued permanent injunction against the members of the self-help group and other interested parties from continuing to occupy the property.
“I find Unity 45 Housing Corporative Society ltd has proved its case on balance of probabilities and i enter the judgement for Unity 45 Housing Corporative Society ltd against Defendants and interested parties,” ruled the judge on the decision.
In the 27 page decision, the judge said the defendants have gone to every length to circumvent justice through insatiable greed, reaping where they did not saw and attempting to sanctify their actions through judicial process.
“Such actions should not be allowed in a civilized society,” said the judge.
The judge found that the members and interested parties have no legal basis of being on the said property as they were trespassers.
The judge noted that the defendants were duly warned not to interfere with the suit property and perusal of documents tabled by the corporative society depict a vast, generally undeveloped but with some buildings scattered here and there most of them unfinished.
She said it was a clear manifestation that the structure were coming up “on the go” as the dispute was thriving.
“It appears that the invasion continued with unbridled ambition and was even apparently captured in the print media in the local daily of 25th September, 2014,” observed the judge.
The headline of the story on the local daily was “Armed land grabbers turnife into living hell for city land owners”.
The judge said the headline resonate with Peter Mburu Kamau testimony who testified on behalf of the corporative society that it is even dangerous for the corporative society to access the property as the members settled by sheer brute force.
Kamau in his testimony said that as of 29th of August 2002, Unity 45 Housing Corporative Society ltd was the registered owner of the suit parcel No. LR 11531/9, having purchased the same from Upsana Kent & Nidhi Kent (the administrators of the Estate of Ranbir S/O Keharchard Kent) and that the land was vacant, and was measuring 40 acres subdivided into 125 plots approved by the City Council of Nairobi and director of survey.
However, there ELC civil case NO. 994 OF 2014 (Judgment) were frequent harassment by grabbers who have all along sought to illegally acquire and sell the said land to unsuspecting members of the public which led to prosecution of various criminal cases in the years preceding 2008.
He added that in the year 2009, the defendants filed a suit (Nairobi HC Civil Case No. 353 of 2009) against the administrators of the estate of the late Ranbir S/O of Keharchand claiming the suit parcel by way of adverse possession.
