Court stops Sudi's grab of 40-acre Mara land over 'fraudulent' deed

Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi's alleged attempt to grab a 40.5-acre parcel of land in the Maasai Mara has been blocked by the High Court.

In a ruling recent Environment and Land Court has frozen all dealings on the prime property after finding that businessmen Neel Ashwin Gudka and Akash Kirit Gudka had established a prima facie case challenging a title issued in favour of Sudi and Mara Golf and Wild Resort Limited, despite an earlier court judgment declaring the brothers the lawful owners of the land.

In a ruling delivered by Justice Michael Mwanyale, the court restrained MP Sudi and Mara Golf and Wild Resort Limited from entering, developing, selling or in any way dealing with the contested property pending the determination of a suit challenging its ownership.

"Pending the hearing and determination of this suit, a temporary injunction is here by issued restraining the Sudi and Mara Golf and Wild Resort Limited whether by themselves their directors, officers, agents, servants, and or any other persons acting under their authority from asserting ownership, exercising control over, dealing developing alienating, charging, leasing and/or in any manner whatsoever interfering with the Property Title no. Transmara / Kerinkani/772," Justice Mwanyale ordered

Also barred are Nakuyiet Ndorotet Kura, Stephen Partareto Ole Barta and the Land Registrar, Transmara, the third, fourth and fifth respondents in the suit.

The judge found that preserving the land was necessary because allowing any further dealings before the dispute is heard could occasion irreparable harm to the applicants if they ultimately succeed at trial.

The latest dispute centres on how a fresh title emerged in 2025 in favour of Sudi and the resort company, even though the ownership of the same parcel had already been determined by the Environment and Land Court in an earlier case.

Court records reviewed by The Standard show that the title had been the subject of a bitterly contested boundary suit, Kilgoris Environment and Land Case E008 of 2022, filed by the Gudka brothers against a neighbouring landowner, Osika Ole Roitei.

Filed in July 2022, the case dragged through three years of witness testimony, survey reports and even a summons for a death certificate, before Justice Mwanyale delivered judgment on November 20, 2025, conclusively affirming the Gudkas as the lawful owners of Transmara/Kerinkani/772, measuring approximately 40.5 hectares.

The dispute had arisen after the Gudkas accused Roitei, owner of the adjacent Transmara/Kerianki/328, of encroaching onto their land in 2018, prompting a Land Registrar's boundary report that year confirming the encroachment.

When Roitei ignored the finding, the Gudkas sued, seeking eviction, a permanent injunction and damages.

At trial, the Deputy Land Registrar of Kilgoris, Job Mitto Kobado, testified that a court-ordered site inspection had established that Kerianki/772's registered acreage was 40.5 hectares, though the actual ground occupation measured only 36.34 hectares, a shortfall traced directly to Roitei's encroachment.

Land surveyor Maurice Otieno corroborated this, telling the court he had found Roitei in occupation of a portion of Kerianki/772, amounting to about 8.5 hectares.

Roitei, testifying in his own defence, claimed he had bought a total of 37 acres over the years from the family of the late Ole Barta and had lived on the land for over 25 years, arguing that a constructive trust or adverse possession protected his occupation.

 But Justice Mwanyale dismissed this defence outright, ruling that Roitei had never pleaded adverse possession or constructive trust in his original filings, and that, under trite legal principle, submissions cannot take the place of evidence.

In his judgment, the court found: "It is clear that the plaintiff Gudkas has proven ownership of Transmara/Kerianki/772, and has proven that the Defendant Roitei has encroached on the said parcel."

Justice Mwanyale entered judgment for the Gudkas, awarded them Sh450,000 in general damages for trespass, dismissed a third-party notice Roitei had filed against the family members who sold him the neighbouring land, and directed the Land Registrar to formally re-fix the boundaries in line with the survey findings.

By the time that judgment was delivered, ownership of Kerinkani/772 had, in the court's own words, been settled on a balance of probabilities in the Gudkas' favour, with no mention whatsoever of Sudi or his resort anywhere in the proceedings.

It is against that backdrop that a fresh title covering the identical parcel resurfaced last year in the names of Sudi and Mara Golf and Wild Resort Limited, purportedly transferred to them by two individuals named in court papers as Nakuyiet Ndorotet Kura and Stephen Partareto Ole Barta, the same Ole Barta family whose land dealings had already featured, indirectly, in the 2022 case as the root of the neighbouring title dispute.

Alarmed, the Gudkas moved back to the same Kilgoris court, this time naming Sudi, the resort, Kura, Ole Barta and the Land Registrar, Transmara, as respondents, and seeking urgent conservatory orders to stop any development, sale or transfer of the land pending a full hearing on its ownership.

None of the five respondents, including Sudi and the resort, filed any response despite being served, a silence Justice Mwanyale described as significant.

"There being no response to the Application, the court deems the same to be unopposed," he noted, though he still directed that the matter be argued on its merits.

Senior Counsel Ahmed Nassir Abdullahi, representing the Gudkas, told the court plainly that a fraudulent title cannot pass ownership.

 "A title cannot be conjured from nothing. A party without a valid title could not pass any title to another. Sudi's title was legally non-existent," he submitted.

Weighing the Gudkas' 2014 title, an official search, a green card and the strength of the 2022 judgment against the paper trail behind Sudi's 2025 title, Justice Mwanyale agreed.

"It is these rights that the Respondents are infringing on," he ruled, citing Section 24(a) of the Land Registration Act, and found the Gudkas had established a prima facie case with a probability of success.

On the risk of harm, the judge warned that allowing Sudi and his co-respondents to proceed "with their injurious actions of trespass using a fraudulently procured title" could cause the Gudkas injury, no damages award could later undo.

He set aside an earlier, more limited status quo order issued in April this year and replaced it with a full injunction, barring all five respondents, including MP Sudi, from any dealings on the land pending trial, and awarded costs against them.

The recent interim order adds to a trail of land disputes trailing Sudi, a close ally of President William Ruto.

He has previously been accused of grabbing a widow's 50-acre parcel in Uasin Gishu, was summoned by Parliament's Lands Committee over more than 1,500 acres in Kesses linked to Moi University land, and was named in April in a petition alleging a Sh20 billion land grab in Runda, Nairobi.

He has consistently denied wrongdoing in those cases, at times arguing the disputed parcels were themselves fraudulently registered before he moved onto them.

Neither Sudi nor Mara Golf and Wild Resort Limited had responded in the current suit by the time of the ruling, and attempts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful by press time.

The substantive suit, which will determine, once and for all, whether Sudi's 2025 title can stand against a parcel the courts had already settled, is yet to be heard.