Tonku shifts murder blame to shamba boy
Kampala- Death row convict Thomas Nkulungira, alias Tonku, yesterday put up a spirited submission where he shifted the burden of murdering his former girlfriend Brenda Karamuzi to his then shamba boy, Fred Ssempijja.
Tonku, who is seeking to overturn the death sentence before the Court of Appeal, made the submissions through his lawyers Benson Tusasirwe and Jonny Patrick Barenzi.
High Court judge Rugadya Atwooki in 2011 convicted and sentenced Mr Nkulungira to death by hanging after finding him guilty of murdering Karamuzi before dumping her half-naked body in a septic tank at his rented home in Muyenga, a Kampala suburb.
But yesterday, his lawyers majorly faulted the trial High Court judge for having over looked the other pieces of circumstantial evidence that implicated Tonku’s shamba boy in the murder.
Lead lawyer Tusasirwe argued that the fact that police arrested the shamba boy with some of the deceased’s property like her phone moments after her murder, he should have been held liable and not his client. He also argued that the killer weapon (hoe) was recovered from the pitlatrine he said was being used by Ssempijja and not Tonku as he had two toilets within his rented house and that this implicated him more.
But the state, through senior Principal State Attorney Jane Okuo Kajuga asked court presided over by justices Augustine Nshimye, Eldad Mwangusya, and Kenneth Kakuru to uphold Tonku’s conviction and death sentence on grounds that the trial high judge properly arrived at the right decision of finding Tonku culpable.
