A High Court judge is facing removal from office for gross misconduct and defrauding a widow in land suit.
In a case filed at the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) by the widow, the judge is accused of bribery and conflict of interest.
The widow has supported her case with a series of audio and video recordings of the judge, a person said to be a close relative and several people involved in the case discussing how to scuttle the appeal that the widow had filed, according to reports by the Sunday Nation.
“From the surrounding circumstances, it is evident the judge was involved in fraud and is, therefore, unfit to continue being in office. I pray that the Judicial Service Commission considers this petition and forwards the same to His Excellency the President in accordance with the provisions of Article 168(4) of the Constitution,” the widow pleads in the petition.
The unnamed judge was recently interviewed for the positions of Chief Justice and judge of the Supreme Court.
In another case, the judge is said to have tampered with a land succession case over a piece of land in Kwale.
Read: Arrest of Two Judges Has Caused Anxiety Among Judicial Officers – CJ Martha Koome
The land was in the name of a company in which both the widow and the deceased husband held shares. However, the husband transferred his shares to the widow before he died in 2014.
A year after his death, a different woman applied for a letter of administration of the property of the deceased and was duly granted in 2015.
The widow challenged the case in court, but the said judge dismissed the case.
“In so doing, the learned judge disregarded the glaring evidence of the ownership of the property and overlooked a basic concept of law on separate legal personality insisting on distributing the property to the respondent when the deceased did not own the suit property itself,” the petition states.
While the case was ongoing, the land was transferred and registered in the name of the judge’s brother.
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