The family had traditionally buried the body of their kin outside his house in their ancestral land, where the newly established Koroto secondary school is currently seats before it was exhumed following a court order on April 9, 2021.
He-the late Paul had filed a court case to petition the school management for what he termed "maliciously grabbing, encroaching and developing his land" before falling sick and died of blood pressure-related sickness.
Immediately after the body was exhumed from the grave, the school management installed a plastic tank connected to the roof cutters to harvest rain water, just on top of the man’s open graveyard.
The case was filed by Kipkemboi Arap Bartuos with 13 family members against five respondents including Bartum Land Adjudication Section(BLAS) and 30 interested parties.
However in her 24-page ruling, Iten Court Judge Lucy Waithaka turned down the respondents after she ascertained that indeed they adjudicated, demarcated and allocated land to public and private individuals without a legitimate administrative action.
She further granted permanent injunction restraining the respondents- the school board and all the interested parties from registering, dealing or engaging in construction activities in the school compound or evicting the petitioners from their ancestral parcel of land.
Waithaka also declared the purported adjudication and registration of Bartum land illegal, null and void saying no demarcation been carried either back in 1983, 1984, 2015 and 2018 or any other time thereafter, unless otherwise directed by the court.
“Having read and considered the evidence adduced in this case by the parties I entertain no doubt that the petitioners have identifiable stake in the subject matter of this suit” she said.
She argued the parcel of Bartum land measuring 17.504.80 hectors was set aside and registered as plot number one to cater for 821 members of the entire Bartum adjudication section.
But instead of consulting, the group range chairman Ryamond Chelimo went ahead to unlawfully annex a section of the land and allocated to some private individuals.
“Under the land adjudication act the only way Ryamond would have subdivided the land set aside for all residents was if it was demonstrated to this court that he was an overall agent or a guardian to all the beneficiaries” she said in her judgment.
In view of this, Waithaka said she found there was no compliance with the law in carrying out the impugned demarcation, whether carried out any day between 1983 to date and any time thereafter.
She also said told the court that they learned about the impugned demarcation in 2020 and therefore she found the delay of the case well-explained and excusable.
The judge however ordered the respondents to meet the petitioners cost of suit.
Aggrieved family have also tabled an appeal to the same court praying to be granted order to rebury their deceased family member Paul Kipchabas in his ancestral land, located in the school compound.
“We have appealed in same court requesting to grant us order so we can rebury the body of our brother Paul in his original grave” family member David Rutto said.
Last week, the body which has overstayed in the mortuary was about to be disposed in the public cemetery with 40 others owing to court orders, but the family intervened and was able to have it retained.
It was a victory for a poor Baringo family that had been forced to exhume the body of a relative on ancestral land claimed by a school compound.
On September 26, a Kabarnet court revoked the school land demarcation under Bartum Group Range terming it null and void. It said it had never been properly demarcated by court order.said
When the family first lost the case and the body of retired police officer Paul Kipchabas, 65, was exhumed and sent to the morgue, the school erected a tank to collect rainwater on the open grave.
The family appealed and said it should bury him in his original gave at Korogo Secondary School compound.
It appealed to the court to allow reburial.a
“I would just wish to view the body of my son, escort him to rest in his grave so my heart could rest,” Kipchabas 86-year old mother and said last Friday.
Her prayers were answered after the Iten Environment and Land Court ruled in favour of the family on Monday.
The body has been lying at the Baringo County Referral Hospital mortuary in Kabaret since April last year.