Two brothers get 18 years in jail for land theft

Samuel Nathan and Kennedy Mairura Nathan. [Stanley Ongwae, Standard]

Two men who plotted to dispossess orphans of their ancestral land have been sentenced to 18 years in jail by a Nyamira Court.

The two were handed a two-year term for each of the nine counts which they were charged with before Keroka Senior Resident Magistrate Kimutai Matata.

Samuel Mogaka Nathan, a policeman and Kennedy Mairura Nathan, a Government employee in Bungoma County who are brothers were charged that on unknown dates in 2012 in Masaba South Sub-county within Kisii County, jointly and with others not before court, forged a Transfer of Land form purporting to have been signed by Joseph Birundu, an uncle to the orphans who was by then the administrator of the property.

They had pleaded not guilty before the Court.

During the hearing, seven prosecution witnesses convinced the Court that indeed the two were involved in the two offences.

Edwin Omwebu, 19, who is one of the three orphans who were fighting for their four-acre land that was left in the elder uncle’s hands testified in court and said his father never sold the land.

The boy had moved the Court into tears when he narrated how one day he found people setting demarcations on the land including on the graveyard where his parents were buried. 

The boy’s aunt, Eunice Barongo, has been taking care of them since 2014.