Eva Nyambura
The family of the late Gem MP Aggrey Ambala has accused the police of failing to carry out a court order protecting their property from being encroached.
According to the family property administrator, and the late legislator’s son Oduor Ambala, police at Hardy Police Station are in cahoots with those seeking to grab their father’s Karen property.
In a letter to Deputy Inspector General of Police, Mr Ambala accused the officers of not taking action when there has been trespassers on their land.
“The only action they have taken was to arrest and subsequently charge me when in fact I was the complainant,” Mr Ambala said in the letter dated May 6, 2020.
The land in question is a 15-acre piece of land which is subdivided into four parcels – LR No 1160/911, LR 1160/912, LR 1160/947, LR 1160/948.
Now the Ambalas are accusing Mr Farouk Bhutt who happens to be celebrated journalist Julie Gichuru’s father, and his wife Khadija Bhutt of grabbing the aforementioned piece of land.
The court of Appeal in 2018 revoked all land transactions made after 2016. Further, all those who had acquired the land were asked to surrender their title deeds to the Lands ministry within 20 days failure to which they risked having them expunged from their records.
The court orders were carried out and the changes gazetted.
Now, the Ambalas say that the Bhutts have encroached their land and have hired goons to keep them off.
“The Officers on the ground seem to have instructions to second guess orders from the Court of Appeal. I have the capacity to hire thugs but I have chosen to put faith in the police service as it happens in civilized societies,” he says.
Responding to Mr Ambala’s letter, Nairobi Regional Police Commander Mathew Kutoh noted that the court did not direct the police to enforce the order.
He did, however, admit that the order was indeed legal.
Ambala, the former Assistant Minister for Culture, collapsed and died in 1985 of an apparent heart attack at Kodiaga Prison in Kisumu where he had been jailed in connection to the murder of Gem MP Horace Ongili Owiti- who defeated Ambala in the 1983 general election.
His vast estate was divided among his children from both his wives. In his will, the late Ambala did not favour his children with Beryl Odinga.
But in 2011, Kisumu High Court Judge Roselyne Nambuye ordered that half of the late Gem MP’s estate be handed over to Beryl’s children and the other half to the children of Ambala’s other wives; the late Perez and Nancy.
They shared among themselves 30 acres of land in Karen Nairobi, land in Muhoroni and Siaya, ten houses in Siaya’s Ambala Estate, 12 flats in Nairobi’s West View apartment, a plot on Turbo Road in Nairobi, and a house on Obote Road in Kisumu.
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