A judge has freed a man jailed for life after finding his daughter gave false testimony that he had defiled her.
The father of six had already been in prison for two years but his appeal against the sentence was upheld after the High Court ruled his nine-year-old daughter lied at the instigation of her teachers.
Despite medical evidence that the man identified in court papers as SOM did not defile his daughter, the Magistrate's Court in Nairobi in 2017 jailed him for life.
But the High Court found that his daughter may have been motivated to lie by her teachers who wanted custody of the girl.
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“In the present appeal, it cannot be ruled out that the complainant may have been influenced by those people who interacted with her to make allegations against the Appellant which had no basis in the truth," ruled Justice Luka Kimaru.
The girl identified as EO stated that she lived with her father together with her younger brother and her younger sister in a two-roomed house. Their mother lived in Migori.
She told the court that her father and brother used to sleep in the sitting room while she and her sister slept in the bedroom. One Friday night, as they were all sleeping, her father came to the bedroom and woke her up. They went to the sitting room where she was defiled.
In his defense, SOM said teachers at his daughter's school wanted custody of his children but he declined, a thing that he felt triggered bad blood between him and them leading to the conspiracy against him.
