My in-laws faked my death certificate so they could disinherit me, Nyeri granny claims

NYERI COUNTY: A close view of her house from the outside tells of biting poverty. The structure she calls home is a crumbling mud-walled house with a rusting iron sheet roof. Mary Wairimu Weru, 67, appears traumatised by the riddle attached to her name.

Wairimu is in the middle of a tumultuous land dispute with her in-laws for the control of a steeply sloping 4.8 acre piece of land in Kiboya village in Ichamara, Mukurwe-ini District. An unmarried woman, she has been living on her late father’s land for more than 50 years. It is a land dispute that has sapped her energy and gulped her financial resources. Her problems began when her in-laws acquired the land’s title deed.

On January 19, 2005, her brother’s wife went to the assistant chief of Harambee Sub location in Makadara, Nairobi, and obtained a letter to enable her change the title deed of the land, which was previously in the name of her husband Michael Ndung’u Waweru, who died in 2003. Before his death, Ndungu lived in Nairobi’s Jericho estate.

Confirming that Pauline Wangu Ndung’u was the sole claimant of the land after the death of her husband, the chief also wrote: “The other complainant Mary Wairimu Weru (sic) is dead.”

This letter, which proclaimed the death of a person who was very much alive, is what was later allegedly used to change ownership of the title, rendering the 67-year-old grandmother, destitute.

Joseph Wambugu Githae, 71, is a village elder and a distant relative of the Ndung’us. He says they discovered the false death of Wairimu when the land dispute went to the Mukurwe–ini Land Disputes Tribunal.

Transcripts of the dispute hearing show that the faked death letter was tabled at the hearing. The tribunal ruled that the land be distributed into equal portions of 2.4 acres between Wairimu and her sister-in-law.

Genuine title

“The letter produced by Wangu shows that she had given false information to acquire letters of administration. She claimed Wairimu was deceased whereas she is alive,” wrote the tribunal in trying to settle the dispute.

Githae says while he will not take sides in this dispute, the issue of the faked death refuses to die in this saga. “Members of the Ethaga clan of the family of Kioni are of the opinion that faking the death of a member is a serious crime which should be investigated, culprits charged and the title annulled,” said Githae, a retired military officer.

Wairimu’s sons Joseph Weru, 51, and Charles Ndung’u, 42, said besides living with the uncertainty of an impending eviction from the land, they have to bear with the discomfort of knowing that somebody close to them faked their mother’s death to acquire their land.

Wangu says she has the genuine title deed but denies any knowledge of the contentious letter written by the Harambee sub-location chief.

She told The Standard on Sunday that her sister in law and her family are living on her land at her mercy and goodwill.

“I will never agree to equal subdivision of this land because those were not the instructions of my late husband or my late father-in-law who only wanted their unmarried sister and daughter allowed to inherit only the portion of land they were using,” said the Jericho based businesswoman.