DPP Tobiko orders Saitoti's son probe

The Director of Public Prosecutions has directed the Police Commissioner to investigate claims by a Nakuru couple that the late Internal Security minister George Saitoti’s son is their lost child.

In a letter addressed to police boss Mathew Iteere and copied to CID director Ndegwa Muhoro, the DPP Keriako Tobiko says that the gravity and magnitude of the claims and allegations by Sebastian Maina Ngunju cannot be overemphasised and need a thorough investigation to establish the truth.

“The allegations are so serious and my office need to establish the truth so as to forthwith commence prosecutions against Mr Ngunju if investigations establish that the claims he made against the Saitoti family are false,” said Mr Tobiko.

He directed the police commissioner to expedite the investigations and furnish his office with the findings within the next 30 days to enable him take appropriate actions.

The DPP was making a response to an application by the late Saitoti’s family seeking an order to direct him to investigate the claims made by Mr Ngunju.

At the same time, Justice Isaac Lenaola extended orders stopping Mr Ngunju from proceeding with a case he filed at the magistrate’s court in Nakuru seeking leave to prosecute Mrs Saitoti over claims that she stole his son until January 10 next year.

The judge told the Nakuru couple, whose relatives thronged the court, that the best way to handle the dispute was for investigations to be carried out instead of seeking private prosecution against Mrs Saitoti.

“This is not a matter of seeking to prosecute Mrs Saitoti but carrying out investigations to establish the circumstances in which their child got lost,” said Justice Lenaola.

Mr Ngunju and his wife filed a suit in a Nakuru court claiming the late Saitoti’s son Zachary Musengi Saitoti was his third born child and asked the magistrate for leave to privately prosecute Mrs Margaret Saitoti for keeping his son allegedly stolen from their Subukia home 24 years ago.

Born Stephen Wachira

Mr Ngunju claimed that his son was born Stephen Wachira and was kidnapped three days to his third birthday by a woman who was later arrested, charged and acquitted by a Nairobi court and that he has been unable to pursue the matter after receiving threats over the issue.

Mrs Saitoti and Zachary responded to the suit through a petition in the High Court claiming that the couple’s suit was an ulterior motive by strangers seeking to divert public attention from the on-going commission of inquiry into the helicopter crash that killed Prof Saitoti and benefit from the misfortune.

Zachary branded the couple claiming to be his parents as fraudsters and pranksters out to extort money from his family and that the character of Mr Ngunju is like that of a poor movie script which cannot bear any scrutiny.

“Mr Ngunju says he saw me on TV at my father’s funeral service and concluded that I resemble his other children. It is beyond me how a total stranger could claim paternity to a child on the basis of a picture on TV notwithstanding he last saw the child at the age of three,” swore Zachary in his affidavit.

According to Zachary, he received a letter from a firm of advocates he concluded were written under instructions of an “extremely insensitive person” inviting him to meet with a group of people from Subukia claiming to his parents but he ignored it until he read reports that they had filed a suit.

Zachary reiterated that he could not be Mr Nguju’s stolen son whose date of birth is indicated as September 21, 1985 since he was born in September 8, 1983.

He maintained that his only parents he has known all his life are late Prof Saitoti and Mrs Saitoti adding that he has never lived in Subukia as claimed by the Nakuru couple and that he has been living in Nairobi except for the time he was in England for studies.

Mrs Saitoti swore that the application by Mr Ngunju was despicable, callous and vicious efforts to seek improper advantage of her and her family adding that however deep a sense of loss he felt regarding his missing son, he had no right to visit such callousness and grief on other families.