High court has asked the American couple whose adopted child was taken away by the police to fight custody battles in the children’s court.
High Court Justice Ngenye Macharia said it will be a waste of the court’s time for the adoptive parents Matthew and Daisy Mazzoncini to have the custody wars fought in High Court as jurisdiction is granted to children’s court.
Macharia said she does not have the details of the case and asked that the matter should be heard by the court handling custody issues and the application file closed.
“Move to the children’s court that will then determine who should be the custodian of the children,” said Macharia.
The judge made the decision after Mazzoncini’s lawyer Austin Ayuo confirmed that the baby is okay and in good health after being rescued by the Director of Criminal Investigations.
The court also granted Ayuo seven days to file a supplementary affidavit replying to the responding affidavit by the respondents to their applications made.
The application to have the baby’s whereabouts disclosed and the baby produced in court was prompted by DCI denial in the involvement of the baby’s abduction which was rumoured to have been conducted by Baraza of the DCI.
Last week on Tuesday, the same court ordered that Mazzoncini’s attorney to visit the child where he is being kept but he should not to reveal the child's location to the couple.
Macharia gave the order after police admitted to taking the child away from the Mazzoncinis on April 5, 2019.
Police at first denied abducting the child and even offered to help find him. But in an affidavit, they said they rescued him.
In the affidavit filed by DCI's Bernard Baraza, police say the child is not epileptic, neither does he have seizures or convulsions as claimed by the parents.
They say they stopped administering Epilim, a drug used to treat epilepsy, to the child and started him on a drug for treating adenoid hypertrophy; a nasal condition.
“I am aware that the minor was rescued by the security agencies on April 5, 2019, and recorded at Spring Valley police station and handed over to the Child Welfare Society of Kenya,” Baraza says.
The case will be mentioned in July 9, 2019 after both parties have filed their responses before the courts a determination in the application and closes the case.
