In November 2022, Niraj and Avani Shah were evicted from their home in Westlands, which was promptly demolished. A document, now proven to be forged, claimed that the land was owned by Lariak Properties. However, uncovered government records on Friday showed that the true owner of the property was Batuk Shah.
Shockingly, it was only the incompetence of land grabbers that allowed the truth to be uncovered, as land records belonging to the property were improperly torn and the land reference number remained behind. Fraudulent officials tore off the land reference details belonging to a different property.
David Nyandoro, a senior assistant to the chief land registrar, said, “We can see a series of alterations where they tore across the page but forgot that this land reference number was located on the top of the paper.”
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Nairobi County’s ICT department has also received some flak for changing the details of the original owner. The Kenya Revenue Authority has furthermore claimed that the lack of access to information before 2020, when land in Nairobi was managed by the county’s ICT department, has limited their ability to access the information.
This methodology of changing digital records and then destroying the original physical records is the modus operandi for land grabbers in Kenya. Now that the Westlands saga involving the Shah’s land and home has uncovered this method, awareness must breed action and reactive response must give way to proactive prevention.
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