Two eye witnesses testified in this trial. PW.2, the victim told court that all the
accused persons are acquaintances. She said that on the fateful day, she left home
in the evening with PW.3 Aketch Damali to go for night prayer at Nagongera
deliverance church. Along the way, they were joined by both A.1 Olowo Kamali
and A.2 Owere Jacob whom she knew well. They conversed. That all of a
sudden, A.3 Abdullah Yusuf and A.4 Owor Charles alias Kulawire intercepted
them. The latter were with the person still at large. The intruders i.e. A.3 and A.4
with the one at large harassed A.1 and A.2 and grabbed PW.2 and dragged her to
the bush and defiled her for a long time and in turns upto midnight. By the time,
PW.3 Aketch Damali had ran away thus escaping the ordeal.
During her testimony PW.2 identified each of the accused persons by touching
each and explaining what role each played. The same applied to PW.3. PW.2
reported the incident immediately to PW.4 Okech Muhamad who rescued her.
PW.4 is an LDU who was on duty and met the victim in a distressful state. She
narrated her ordeal to him and he escorted her to her uncle, then to church where
A.1 and A.2 were arrested taken to police and they implicated both A.3 and A.4
with another still at large.
Although both A.3 and A.4 denied the offence and pleaded defences of alibi the
strong and consistent prosecution evidence put each of the two at the scene of
crime. DW.1 and DW.2 knew DW.3 and DW.4. They implicated them on first
information. This implication was minutely corroborated by the strong evidence of
the victim who identified the two while in the dock.
The investigating officer’s sketch plan and what he saw when he visited the scene
tallied with the description of what took place by DW.1, DW.2, PW.1, PW.2
andPW.3.
I am therefore satisfied beyond any reasonable doubt that both DW.3 Abdullah
Yusuf and DW.4 Owor Charles alias Kulawaya were the culprits. Their
respective defences of alibi was destroyed by the strong prosecution evidence and
on this I agree with the opinion of the lady and gentleman assessors.
I am however not satisfied that both A.1 and A.2 participated in this offence. Their
denial is confirmed by what both PW.2 andPW.3 said that preceded the offence.
The victim said both A.1 and A.2 did nothing to her. It would appear she later
implicated them because of the trauma she went through and recalled her
encounter with the two prior to the offence. The fact that A.1 was found in the
church soon after without any mad is enough to show that they were not at the
scene of crime. I agree with the assessors’ opinion that no evidence sufficiently
implicated A.1 and A.2 in the commission of this offence.