The High Court has freed a man in Bungoma after finding that his sister may have framed him in a bitter inheritance war over 100 acres of land and 600 chickens.

Benson Watta has been acquitted of assault and causing grievous bodily harm to his sister, Nancy Naliaka Watta, as it emerges that she may have conspired to have him jailed for life and out of contention for handling their father’s succession.

Benson was jailed following Nancy’s complaint to police to the effect that her brother attempted to kill her with a chair.

Nancy reported at Nalondo police station that Benson hit her with a chair and left her with severe head injuries that left her unconscious before she was rushed to the hospital by her other brothers, who were at the scene when the fracas unfolded.

Benson was charged in the Chief Magistrate’s Court, which later found him guilty of assault and causing grievous bodily harm. He was fined Sh50,000 or 12 months' imprisonment in default.

The conviction had far-reaching consequences for Benson and did more than expose him to a jail term, as it also cost him his role as the administrator of their late father's estate. The administrator role was handed to another brother whom Nancy preferred to Benson.

The High Court has now overturned Benson’s conviction after finding that some of the evidence shows that Nancy may have injured herself and then framed her brother.

The High Court decision has placed Benson back in contention for administrator rights in their father’s estate. However, the 600 chickens have all died since, leaving just the 100 acres of land as the stakes in the succession fight.

At the centre of the long-running family dispute is the incident of August 2, 2022 that occurred at the Nandolo police station in full glare of the OCS and other junior police officers, where four Watta siblings engaged in a physical fight that left Nancy with head wounds.

Sister's report

It all started when Nancy entered Nandolo police station and reported that Benson had stormed the family’s ancestral home holding a gun and that he was accompanied by armed goons.

The station’s commanding officer summoned Benson.

Benson honoured the summons, accompanied by his wife, Ann Njeri, and the area assistant chief.

Inside the station commander’s office, a scuffle ensued with Nancy, one of their brothers identified as Samson and another individual identified as Johnson, all on one side. The other side had Benson and his wife.

Nancy would later claim that Benson repeatedly struck her head with a plastic chair, leaving her unconscious and bleeding, later classified by the examining doctor as grievous bodily harm.

During the trial before the magistrate court, Nancy’s account was backed by her brother, Samson, who testified that he witnessed the assault and unsuccessfully tried to shield his sister from their elder sibling Benson.

Police testimony

However, two serving police officers who were present when the confrontation unfolded independently testified that it was Samson and Johnson who had actually assaulted Benson, and that Benson hid under a table.

According to the two police officers, as the scuffle intensified, Nancy was injured when she struck her head against a wooden shelf fixed to the wall while trying to reach and assault her brother, Benson, as he hid.

The police officer accounts were further corroborated by the assistant chief, Ezekiel Mironge's testimony, who had accompanied Benson to the station, as well as photographic evidence of a blood-stained shelf entered into the record by the investigating officer.

However, despite the various accounts of the incident, notably involving the prosecution's own police witness contradicting Nancy’s account, the trial magistrate convicted Benson of causing grievous harm and fined him Sh50,000 or to serve 12 months in prison.

On appeal at the High Court, the two police officers who were on duty at Nalondo Police Station that morning maintained that they never saw Benson strike his sister.

Rather, they told the court that tempers had flared after several family members confronted Benson inside the station. According to them, Benson was the one being chased and assaulted by his siblings.

And with the photographic evidence produced by investigators of a blood-stained wooden shelf, the High Court judge found it consistent with the officers' account that Nancy's injuries resulted from the collision rather than an assault with a chair.

“Of central importance is the photographic evidence produced by the investigating officer, depicting the blood-stained wooden shelf at the scene. This exhibit is entirely consistent with, and indeed corroborative of, the account given by PW6, DW6 and DW3 (police officers) that the complainant's (Nancy) injury arose from contact with the shelf rather than from a blow inflicted by the Appellant (Benson).

There was no independent forensic or physical evidence, no blood on a chair, no chair fragment recovered as a weapon bearing traces of the injury, no independent witness present at the moment of impact who was not a party to the underlying family dispute capable of resolving this conflict in favour of the prosecution's version. “ noted the Judge.

Substantial doubt on assault claim

Ultimately, the court concluded that the evidence created a real and substantial doubt over how Nancy sustained her injuries.

The judge went further to fault the trial magistrate for preferring the testimony of family members embroiled in a long-running inheritance dispute while overlooking the evidence of independent police officers who had no apparent interest in the succession wrangles.

"The prosecution's own evidence was internally inconsistent on the central issue of causation," the judge observed, noting that such contradictions must operate in favour of an accused person.

The court also found it significant that both sides had acknowledged the dispute stemmed from the administration of their late father's estate.

In her testimony, Nancy admitted that the conflict indeed revolved around who should administer the estate, while Benson maintained that the grievous criminal case by her sister was engineered to edge him out of that role.

Although the judge declined to determine whether the prosecution had been motivated by succession politics, the judgement recognised that the inheritance battle formed the backdrop against which every one of the twelve witnesses' credibility who testified on the events at the police station had to be assessed. Ultimately, the judge went on to quash Benson's conviction, acquitting him and setting aside the sentence.

The court also rejected the request to enhance the sentence to life imprisonment, clarifying that although grievous harm is punishable by life imprisonment, that is the maximum sentence available and not a mandatory one.

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tmatiko@ke.nationmedia.com