Widow blocked from burying son over land dispute

A 57-year-old widow was dealt a major blow when a Nkubu court in Meru County ordered her to vacate a 1.9-acre plot of land where she had lived since 1983.

Hellen Ndumba has been ordered to vacate the land on which she built a house and lived with her husband, Luka Murithi, who died in July 2018. In addition to exhuming her husband's body from the land, Ms Ndumba is unable to bury her son Paul Murithi on it, and his body has been at Nyeri General Hospital mortuary since July last year.

This comes after the late Murithi's sisters, Florence Riinya and Janet Guantai, filed a court petition to compel Ndumba to vacate the land after selling it to a buyer.
Ndumba lost her case despite claiming that the land's title deed had been changed in favour of her two sisters-in-law without the involvement of the rest of the family.

Ms Riinya and Ms Guantai tabled a land sale agreement in court, indicating that they were selling it for Sh1.9 million. The two sold the land along with the developments, which included a semi-permanent house and access to the Kamenchu water project.

The two sisters testified in court that their late father, Kireria Kirurui, transferred Nkuene/U-Mikumbune/1685 to himself and them sometime in 2011. When Kirurui died, the two sisters had the registration corrected and a new title deed issued to them.

According to the sisters, their brother Murithi began harassing and chasing them away.

Murithi also filed a lawsuit in Meru's Environment and Land Court, which was later transferred to Nkubu Magistrate's Court, seeking cancellation of the title.

Ndumba has now filed an appeal against the order to vacate the land. In addition to fighting the move, she has written to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), requesting an investigation into how the ownership of the title was changed.

"This is family land, and everyone in the family had to agree on succession. I lived and farmed here with my late husband and now have nowhere to go," Ndumba said.

In a case that has dragged on for more than three years, Ndumba is now facing homelessness, as well as a lack of a place to bury two bodies-her husband's and son's.
She has been served with a notice to vacate by agents of her sisters-in-law, as she fights attempts to evict her from the home.

Her sisters accuse her of trespassing and want her to leave. She has been served with a notice to that effect by their advocates.

"To our client's detriment, you have continued to deprive them of their use of land, illegally occupy their land, and generate profits out of it; which is a blatant violation of the laws of the land. We wish to bring to your attention that laws must be adhered to religiously, by all and sundry, this not being an exception. Your actions are not in tandem with what was envisaged by the law, legitimate expectations of any landowner, and to this end, we are hereby citing you for breach of the same," reads a notice written by her sisters-in-law's advocates.