Jackson Kihara, a son of the late Nderitu Gachagua, is currently locked inside a prison cell serving a 20 year sentence for robbery with violence. By his own account, he should not be there at all.
Appearing before High Court Judge Alexander Muteti while seeking a review of his sentence, Kihara told the court that his uncle Rigathi Gachagua deliberately and falsely framed him for the robbery with violence charge that put him away. The motive he described was not anger or personal animosity in the ordinary sense. It was money and property.
Kihara alleges that with him out of the way behind prison walls, Gachagua moved to take control of a multi-million shilling family estate belonging to the late Nderitu Gachagua's children. Removing Jackson Kihara from the picture through a criminal conviction, the nephew alleges, was the mechanism chosen to clear that path.
The gravity of what Kihara is alleging cannot be overstated. He is telling a High Court judge that a man who served as Deputy President of Kenya used the criminal justice system as a personal tool to imprison his own nephew and loot a dead brother's estate.
Whether the court finds merit in his application for a sentence review remains to be seen. But the allegations themselves, made openly and on record before a judge, have already escaped the courtroom and taken on a life of their own in Kenya's public conversation.
A 20 year sentence. A missing estate. And a nephew pointing at his uncle from behind bars.
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