Standard columnist Tony Mochama popularly known as Smitta Smitten has been awarded a whopping Ksh 9 million as damages in a defamation suit.
Sometimes in January 2015, Smitta moved to court to sue activist/poet Shailja Patel and Prof Wambui Mwangi after they started a Twitter campaign to have him fired from Standard Group.
The two women ran a smear campaign against Smitta under the hashtag #stoptonymochama. They claimed that the Standard columnist sexually assaulted them at a poetry party in Loresho, Nairobi in 2014.
After a three year court battle, Smitta has finally been vindicated. Senior principal magistrate A.M Obura ruled that there was no concrete evidence that Smitta molested or sexually assaulted Patel and Professor Mwangi.
The magistrate further awarded Smitta Ksh 9 million for damages caused by the two women who ran a smear campaign against him.
“I have considered the legal position and re-looked the tweets as well as the threads on Mochama’s documents. The truth of these tweets concerning Mochama has not been established,” said Senior principal magistrate A.M Obura.
The magistrate held that the words used by Patel and Professor Mwangi were defamatory and were calculated to ridicule or lower Smitta’s esteem in the eyes of public through social media.
