The prosecution of two former students accused of setting fire to St. Bernard’s Mmanya Secondary School in Kyotera District has suffered a major setback after police told the High Court that key exhibits in the eight-year-old murder trial have gone missing from its exhibit stores.
The Masaka High Court, presided over by Senior Resident Judge Victoria Nakintu Katamba, heard evidence from Police Sergeant Gofin Buteere, the lead investigating officer, that exhibits recovered from the scene of crime cannot be traced in the stores at Rakai Central Police Station, where they had been kept.
On Monday, the trial judge directed the prosecution, led by Senior State Attorney Deborah Itwau, to conclude its case so that the court can proceed to make a determination in the eight-year-old trial.
The prosecution had notified the judge that it would present the Scenes of Crime Officer and the lead investigator as its final witnesses. However, proceedings stalled after it emerged that the exhibits listed on the court record could not be traced.
Sergeant Buteere, who appeared before court as the seventh prosecution witness, told the trial judge that efforts to retrieve the exhibits had been unsuccessful.
”As instructed, I proceeded to Rakai and contacted the storekeeper, who was already searching the store. However, because the store is fully packed, we could not find the items,” Buteere testified, asking the court for more time to broaden the search.
Sam Ssekyewa, the lawyer representing Edison Nio and Alex Mugarura, had earlier requested the court to compel the prosecution to produce the exhibits to corroborate the evidence presented.
According to Buteere’s testimony, police recovered several items from the scene, including a jerrycan, a padlock, clothes and metallic tools believed to have belonged to the suspects or to have been used in setting the school dormitory ablaze. The fire claimed the lives of 10 students and left several others injured.
Ssekyewa described the disappearance of the exhibits as shocking, wondering how critical evidence in a case of such magnitude could not be handled with great care. He accused the police of mishandling the investigation and questioned whether the wrong suspects had been arrested.
He requested the court to task the prosecution to produce the missing exhibits or hold the police accountable for their mishandling of the evidence. In response, Senior State Attorney Deborah Itwau asked the court to grant investigators additional time to conduct a thorough search, arguing that the exhibits are critical to the prosecution’s case. Although Judge Katamba granted what she described as a final adjournment until Monday to allow police to trace and produce the exhibits, Ssekyewa maintained that the investigation had already been messed up.
He argued that police had previously included as a suspect an individual who was already in their custody when the dormitory was set on fire.
He insists that the prosecution is pursuing the wrong suspects because none of the witnesses presented so far has testified to seeing the accused participate in the commission of the crime.
Four suspects who are all former students at the school were arrested in relation to the incident. But last month, the court acquitted Dickson Kisuule, after it emerged that he was in police custody at the time the incident occurred.
Similarly, in 2024, the court also dismissed charges against Henry Taremwa because his rights as a juvenile had been violated by police when they falsified his age and detained him in the cells of adult inmates-URN. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
