Court defers plea taking for businessman

The High Court has declined to direct a businessman to take a plea in a Sh400 million land tussle.

Instead High Court judge Anne Onginjo has set  February 21 for an inter parties hearing after police sought orders to charge Jelle Noor Bulle with giving them false information.

Bulle was arrested on February 2 by Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) officers on claims of giving them false information.

This is after he had complained to the police that strangers had invaded and started construction in the two-acre parcel of land on Links Road, Nyali in Mombasa, despite an ownership dispute pending before the Court of Appeal.

But instead, the police arrested him and detained him at Muthaiga Police Station.

On February 3, police attempts to charge him failed after the Director Public Prosecution’s office declined to approve the charges.

The businessman was released on a Sh50,000 cash bail and directed to appear before a Mombasa court February 7.

The charge sheet read: “Jelle Noor Bulle on the 14th of November 2021 at the DCI headquarters within Nairobi County informed sergeant Felix Nzauka a police officer attached to Land Fraud Investigations Unit that you were registered owner of parcel of land known as CR No. 21722 LR NO.MN/1/5130 information he knew or believed to be false.”

However when he was arraigned before Magistrate Rabera, his lawyers objected to the plea taking arguing that the charge was faulty and that the court had not been informed of the pending matter in the court of appeal.

The magistrate then deferred the case for two weeks.

Bulle, who is a director of Todonyang Investment Limited, wrote to DCI boss on October 13, 2021 requesting an investigation into circumstances surrounding the development of the plot that has been in court dispute for the last 13 years.