• Kitany wants the court to annul her union with Linturi
• Linturi’s lawyer Muthomi Thiankolu says the senator has been in a monogamous marriage and the alleged customary marriage is null and void
Image: FILE
Meru Senator Mithika Linturi on Wednesday said he has been married to only one wife for 18 years.
He said he could thus not have been in a position to marry another woman as alleged by his estranged wife Mary Kitany.
Kitany wants the court to annul her union with Linturi. She says they were married under Meru and Nandi customs, and all the rituals were carried out by elders who united them.
The court heard that Linturi paid dowry in the form of a Nissan X-trail to Kitany's family and also gave cash. It costs approximately Sh1.5 million to import a Nissan X-trail.
The court heard they both sipped mursik and miraa was chewed to formalise the union. The elders who performed the rituals and some of the villagers who attended the ceremony are willing to testify, the court was told.
Linturi’s lawyer Muthomi Thiankolu on Wednesday, however, said the senator has been in a monogamous marriage and therefore the alleged customary marriage is null and void.
“Even if we are to assume they went through a customary marriage, it would still be void. There would be no marriage for you to annul,” he said.
Muthomi said even if photos of the alleged customary marriage exist, they do not make the marriage legal and they prove nothing
“A Christian marriage is a monogamous marriage and so he had no capacity to conduct a customary marriage, it would be void,” he said.
The legislator argues the divorce case was filed to harass him and to obtain orders relating to property ownership.
Muthomi said Linturi, his alleged legal wife and children were barred from accessing their home in Runda until the divorce case with Kitany is finalised.
He said they have undergone hardships because of the orders freezing his accounts due to the numerous cases filed by Kitany against him.
“No amount of sympathy will change the legal character of the question on whether they are legally married. This is a fatally defective suit,” Muthomi said.
Kitany has accused Linturi of forging the marriage certificate he produced in court.
Through lawyer Danstan Omari, Kitany says there was never a marriage between Linturi and the alleged wife.
Omari asked the court to summon Linturi and the registrar of marriages to determine the authenticity of the marriage certificate.
Omari also denied claims Kitany was harassing Linturi, saying she is a jobless woman with no capacity to harass a senator.
“It's him who evicted my client from their matrimonial home until the court intervened and gave her access to the house,” he added.
Kitany maintains she is lawfully married to Linturi and will prove so through the various people who have sworn affidavits affirming the two were indeed married.
Omari told the court the two blended their families when they started dating and each of their three children from different relationships stayed together as siblings.
The court will rule on May 29 whether the divorce petition will proceed or it will be quashed as applied by Linturi.
Edited by Eliud Kibii