• Zachary Baraza of Siuma Auctioneers was summoned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters for grilling before he was detained.
• He spent his night at Muthaiga police cells ahead of planned production in court where the detectives plan to make a miscellaneous application to detain him.
An auctioneer was on Tuesday arrested over violent eviction of a family from their house in Westlands area, Nairobi.
Zachary Baraza of Siuma Auctioneers was summoned to the Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters for grilling before he was detained.
He spent his night at Muthaiga police cells ahead of planned production in court where the detectives plan to make a miscellaneous application to detain him.
Police want the court to allow them to hold Baraza for ten days as they investigate the incident.
The detectives want to know who contracted Baraza to demolish the house claimed by an Asian family which had known it as their home for 46 years.
The investigators say whereas Baraza had told them he was contracted by a faceless owner of the land, he had refused to divulge his identity.
“He will carry the luggage of this mess. He has refused to say who is the claimant of the said land,” a senior official aware of the probe said.
The police visited the house on Tuesday and told the family to continue living there even though the structure was brought down by hired goons.
Baraza told police he had been given an order by the claimant of the land to evict the family.
He added after the eviction, he handed over the structure to the owner who continued with the eviction of the occupants from the one acre land.
“Mine was to implement the court order and I handed the house to the owner,” he said.
The woman evicted, Avani Shah, said a private company claimed to have ownership of the land they settled on and gave them a short-notice to leave.
She added the company went against a court order to demolish the house.
Shah said her family had been in that land for 46 years, and it has been her home for the last 22 years.
On Monday, November 7, a mob deployed by a private developer invaded the resident's homes to complete their assignment of evicting the family.
They had had first descended on the home of Shah, a Kenyan of Asian origin, on November 4, to begin eviction.
"Somebody claiming they have had this house since 2010, but its house has another 25 years on its lease," Shah cried.
The woman said she was given an hour to pick up her things and vacate the premises.
She added some goons entered her house and started stealing whatever they could after the short notice.
Shah tried to get local authorities, including the police, to intervene in the situation, but all was in vain.
Authorities have developed rules to be followed when one is being evicted out of a court order.
The order has to be served to police who take the same to a security committee after verifying the same before it is implemented.