Waiganjo fails to halt court cases

PHOTO | JOSEPH KANYI | FILE Joshua Waiganjo (R) appears before a Nyeri court on January 15, 2013.

What you need to know:

  • Police ‘impostor’ suffers setback after judge turns down plea to stop criminal charges

All cases against alleged police impostor Joshua Waiganjo will be heard and determined, the High Court ruled on Monday.

Mr Justice David Majanja rejected Mr Waiganjo’s request to have the cases suspended pending the report of the committee which investigated his status and conduct. The report was released on Thursday.

There are four different cases against Mr Waiganjo pending before magistrate courts in Naivasha, Nyeri and Nairobi.

The prosecution had hinted that it had 35 fresh claims against Mr Waiganjo who was arrested last December 31.

He had approached the High Court to issue an injunction restraining the Attorney-General and the Director of Public Prosecutions from pursuing the cases until the completion of investigations into his conduct.

However, Judge Majanja rejected the request which also sought that the police be barred from further investigating and preferring more charges against him.

The judge ordered the cases pending before the chief magistrate’s courts at Nyeri, Naivasha and Nairobi to continue and directed that he serves a notice of his petition to the parties for response before February 18.

Mr Waiganjo had feared double jeopardy in his case, arguing through his lawyers that it may be prejudicial for the cases to run concurrently with the committee’s investigations. The committee’s interim findings tabled last week exonerated former police commissioner Mathew Iteere from blame in the Waiganjo saga.

The team instead blamed suspended Rift Valley PPO John M’Mbijiwe and his Anti-Stock Theft unit counterpart Remi Ngugi for having known that Mr Waiganjo was not a genuine police officer but allowed him to operate in their midst for a decade.

Mr Waiganjo had invoked sections of the Constitution he deemed violated and asked for the court’s intervention.

“A parallel team of investigators probing the conduct of the petitioner through a public inquiry have put him at a serious procedural disadvantage,” his lawyer had argued.

Mr Waiganjo is in detention at King’ong’o Prison, having had his bond cancelled in a fraud case in which he is accused of impersonating a police officer and stealing a matatu in Nairobi.

He jumped bail after the court had released him on a cash bail of Sh100,000.