Kenyan government has been taken to court over alleged eviction of residents from Mau Forest, one of the country's water towers.
The eviction has uprooted thousands of people from their homesteads in a case filed by one Prof Paul Kiprono.
He alleges in a suit before the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) that many people were tortured during the exercise with their homes torched.
Some of the victims suffered loss of properties worth millions of shillings without compensation.
The applicant further alleges that the eviction caused more than 5,000 pupils to drop out of schools.
The forced eviction pushed the residents out of their ancestral homes and farms to the temporary camps without shelter, education and other basic necessities.
Prof Kiprono, who is a governor of one of the counties in Kenya, urged that the government has not provided any support to the pupils.
Responding to the allegations during the Court session this week ,a counsel for the Kenya government denied the allegations, saying there was no iota of truth in them.
He said the accusations were not only unfounded but also do not violate any clause of the East African Community (EAC) Treaty.
The government also denies that it carried out the alleged forceful evictions,rape, physical torture and destruction of property and homes.
It, however, contends that in 2018 due process was carried out to remove illegal encroachments into the forest.
One of the witnesses who appeared online from Nairobi, Godfrey Kipchirchir, is currently working on a Mau Forest book project.
The matter came before Justices of EACJ First Instance Court Justice Yohane Masare (the principal judge), Audace Ngiye,Charles Nyachae, Charles Nyawello and Richard Muhumuza.
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