•“The woman has been following up on the case, the husband is sickling. She says the stepson in question had refused to surrender the title deed,” Musyoka said.
•He said the family land in question is approximately 70 acres.
Image: The Star
A woman stripped naked in protest of lands office in Machakos County.
Regina Mumbua Kiua, 88, removed all her clothes remaining with only her inner pants outside Machakos County Commissioner’s office on Wednesday.
The woman who hails from Kimangu in Kithimani, Yatta sub-county claimed attempts to seek assistance from the lands office over a family land ownership row had been futile, forcing her to strip naked in protest.
An official from Machakos Lands Union, Richard Musyoka, said the woman was protesting against the land’s registry in Machakos for failing to address her complaints.
“The woman made complaints to the union’s office last week. She claimed that one of her stepsons had forcibly taken her land’s title deed,” Musyoka told the Star by phone on Wednesday.
He said the woman claimed the title deed was on both her ageing husband Kiua Kyanguku and hers. The son in question is of her co-wife.
“The woman has been following up the case, the husband is sickling. She says the stepson in question had refused to surrender the title deed,” Musyoka said. He said the family land in question is approximately 70 acres.
“She was upset after following the struggles she has been undergoing in pursuit to seek justice. She earlier sought a lawyer’s services who wrote to the Directorate of Public Prosecution who in turn wrote to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Machakos to intervene in the matter,” Musyoka said.
Musyoka said the woman who had been accompanied by the husband was yet to be assisted.
An administrator who intervened after the woman stripped naked in Machakos town said her case needed to be sorted through arbitration.
He requested to remain anonymous stating that the matter ought to be handled by his colleagues from the Yatta sub-county where the complaining woman hails from.
“I personally handled the matter after the woman stripped naked in Machakos town. I made the bold step since she stripped within my area of jurisdiction despite the fact that she hails from another sub-county,” the administrator told the Star on phone.
The administrator said the woman’s husband had two wives who were warring over land whose title deed had been taken by her stepson.
He dismissed claims that the Machakos land’s registrar was colluding with some of the woman’s relatives to grab the contested land thereby denying her justice.
“The family’s property is intact, I have personally done a search of the title deeds. No one has grabbed any of the parcels, one of the woman’s stepsons has the original title deed,” he said.
“We have advised that the DCC, Yatta call the families and administrate on the property. I did the search myself today and gave the search certificate to the woman. The issue can be handled through arbitration. But if the son says he has no title deed, they should report that it is lost so as to be issued with a new one for subdivisions to be done,” he said.