Battle of titles: Tycoon's daughters deepen puzzle on prime beach land

A fresh storm is brewing over a prime 53-acre beachfront estate in Msambweni, Kwale County, after revelations that the property has two conflicting title deeds.

At the heart of the dispute is a city lawyer Guy Spencer Elms and accountant Nileshkumar Mohanlal Shah, whose ownership claim was revoked by the Lands ministry last year, only for a January court order to renew the contest.

According to the ministry, Spencer and Shah presented a disputed title deed for the land that is owned by late Pritam Singh Panesar.

And in a public notice published last week in a local daily, Tanmeet Kaur Panesar and Jasmeet Kaur Panesar introduced themselves as Panesar’s daughters and ultimate beneficiaries of his estate.

The two women defended Spencer and Shah as rightful executors acting purely on their instructions, insisting the pair had “no beneficial interest” in their late father’s property in Kwale’s Msambweni.

But a gazette notice number 14724 dated November 8, last year, and signed by Kwale Land Registrar SN Mokaya tells a different story.

The registrar degazetted a title deed issued on July 28, 2023, in the names of Spencer and Shah, ruling that it had been unlawfully procured. The official affirmed that the  valid title deed remained the one issued to Panesar on July 9, 2009.

Yesterday, Mokaya confirmed the nullification of the document.

“The duo misrepresented facts and when we noticed, we initiated the degazettement,” he told The Standard on phone.

“Their title is still valid since the court stopped me from degazettement until the matter is heard and determined. Nevertheless, the first title ought to have been surrendered for cancellation before issuing another,” he added.

The gazette notice directed the two executors to surrender the disputed title within 60 days. When they failed to do so, the registrar declared the 2023 title “cancelled, of no effect, and null and void”.

Noticeably, the names of Tanmeet and Jasmeet, who now speak as ultimate beneficiaries, do not appear anywhere in the will deposited in court by Spencer and Shah.

Their identities surfacing for the first time in the public notice further raise questions about the true structure of the late Panesar’s estate and who stands to benefit.

The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) forensic unit had alleged that Spencer and Shah, who are named in the contentious will as joint executors, presented a will carrying signatures said to be inconsistent with the late billionaire’s known hand. In the contested will, DCI forensic document examiner Alex Mwongera compared the signature on against that on Panesar’s national identity card, and concluded the two did not match.

Panesar died in July, 2018, leaving behind a vast estate stretching from Nairobi to the Coast, a fortune that has been at the centre of legal battles.

While the daughters claim in their newspaper statement that the will has never been challenged, court filings and forensic reports point to ongoing disputes over its authenticity.

Three men, Mohammed Ruwa Maridadi, Anthony Michael Mwanza Mulwa, and Ahmed Ouma Randa, are also fighting over the prime beachfront parcel of land, which they claim to have acquired rights over through adverse possession.

That claim, however, was quashed in court after Spencer and Shah applied to set it aside on grounds that they were the duly appointed executors and trustees of the estate, yet they were never joined in the original case.

Maridadi, Mulwa, and Randa had argued that they had lived on the land for over 12 years, and asked that the title be transferred into their names.

As the competing claims persist unresolved, the Panesar succession battle appears far from over.