Exhumed priest’s body remains in fridge 2 months later

CID spokesperson Vincent Ssekate

KAMPALA.

Exactly two months and four days after doctors exhumed the body of Fr Peter Kasooli Bwayo in Bulambuli District, his family is stuck with the remains with no clear programme for reburial.
The body has been under refrigeration at the Mbale municipal mortuary where the family opted to keep it as they wait for postmortem results.
Dr Moses Byaruhanga, the police director of medical services, acting on the orders of Mbale Grade One magistrate’s court, on March 21 dug up the priest’s remains at his ancestral home nearly four years after his burial.
Fr Bwayo of the Apostles of Christ congregation in the Catholic Church, passed on in Florida, USA, on June 24, 2014, and his body upon return to Uganda was buried at at Bunambutye, Bulambuli District, after the Catholic Archdiocese of Tororo declined to have his remains buried on any of its premises.
The church has remained tight-lipped on controversies since 2014.
Dissatisfied with reasons given for the cause of Fr Bwayo’s death and talk of “treasure” in his coffin, his elder brother Clement Bwayo applied for court orders to have the body exhumed for an autopsy to determine what could have killed him.
After cutting through a huge metallic coffin, Dr Byaruhanga carried out postmortem examination on the body at Mbale municipal mortuary and issued a preliminary report indicating that the cause of death could not be seen by the naked eye.
“The body is still in the mortuary in Mbale and we’re checking on it every other day but we cannot bury until we get to know what killed our brother. We are not satisfied with the way the police are handling the investigations and we rejected the report that was given to us,” Mr Bwayo said yesterday.
He said they have since not heard from Dr Byaruhanga who had said samples of the remains had been taken to the government analytical laboratory in Kampala to carry out more tests on the internal organs to establish what could have killed the priest. Dr Byaruhanga was not available for a comment but police spokesperson for criminal investigation department, Mr Vicent Ssekate, yesterday pleaded for more time to establish whether the results from the lab are out.
But Mr Bwayo said the family has asked both Internal Affairs ministry and the US embassy in Kampala to intervene since the priest had become an American citizen. He also said the family is now seeking private pathologists to carry out another postmortem examination.
The family plans to take legal action against some of the priests in the Apostles of Christ congregation whom they suspect had a hand in Fr Bwayo’s death and also the US government that allowed the body of its citizen to be returned to Uganda with a forged passport issued in Kampala on the day he died.