Tycoon Suresh Kantaria at his ICU bed at the Nairobi Hospital in May, 2025
A businessman is fighting for his lifetime investments in court, seeking orders to reverse the auctioning of his multi-million shilling properties that were sold in January.
Suresh Kantaria is also appealing to Chief Justice Martha Koome to intervene in his case saying judges at the Milimani High Court’s Family Division have inordinately delayed hearing of his appeals.
In affidavits filed in court, Kantaria says the court in ordering the auction of his lifetime investments have condemned him to a slow death.
The affidavits filed through senior counsel Gibson Kamau Kuria say Kantaria has not been lucky since December 18, 2022 in his endeavours to have his appeals heard.
“As a result, his three properties were sold illegally on January 21, 2025. He has been reduced to a pauper and his right to life contravened. He has virtually been sentenced to death,” the affidavits say.
The events were a culmination of a protracted divorce case where High Court deputy registrar Albert Lesotia ordered that Kantaria’s parcels of land be sold to raise cash to pay his former wife Mradula Kantaria.
The divorce case ended in 2015 after the Court of Appeal ordered Kantaria to pay a monthly upkeep of Sh350000 to his former wife.
The three-judge bench also directed that the three parcels be sold and proceeds divided between the man and the woman in the ratio of 3:1.
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However, in his ruling that has irked Kantaria, Lesotia ordered that the properties be sold and Mradula paid Sh40 million being the upkeep arrears and remaining cash be kept in an escrow account of her lawyer from where she will be paying herself the monthly upkeep.
Kantaria’s appeal to stay the ruling failed after Justice Hillary Chemitei recused himself from hearing the matter.
A fresh application to have the auction suspended also failed after it was scheduled for hearing on January 30, nine days after the auction happened.
This rendered the appeals nugatory as they had been overtaken by events. The matter remains unheard five months later.
In his new applications that he wants certified urgent, Kantaria now wants his case transferred to another division of the High Court. Alternatively, he wants the Chief Justice to empanel a three-judge bench to hear the matter.
Kantaria believes no more judicial officers are available from the Family Division to hear his case given the petitions he filed with the Judicial Service Commission against two of them.
In the new case, he has sued lawyers representing his former wife, deputy registrar Lesotia, Garam Auctioneers who conducted the auction and the buyers of his properties during the action.
“As I have explained, all the respondents herein have sentenced me to a slow death by taking away from me my lifetime investments,” Kantaria says.
It is his contention that the land in Gigiri which measures one and half acres was undervalued. The property went for Sh181500000 at the auction yet its value is Sh242600000 according to Kantaria.
The businessman wants the court to set aside the auction sale of January 21 and restrain Nazir Manji, Zahir Manji and Mohamed Ali from taking over possession of his land parcels pursuant to the auction.
He is also seeking a declaration that a judge is seized of the execution proceedings.
It is Kantaria’s case that the deputy registrar erred in his ruling that ordered the auction by ignoring “binding decisions of the Court of Appeal and High Court.”
He particularly singled out a decision of Justice Loice Komingoi of the Environment and Land Court who in December 2022 ruled that Kanatria did not owe his former wife any money.
In that case, given Mradula still lives in Kantaria’s Gigiri home, the court found that she owed her former husband Sh46 million in accrued rent.
“The Court of Appeal ordered Kantaria to pay Mradula Sh350000 monthly as maintenance from May 5, 2015. The amount due is Sh31850000. This amount must be offset from what is owed to Kantaria which is Sh46130000 less Sh31850000 and that would make Sh14280000,” Justice Komingoi ruled.
