Agent of truth in crime scenes

John Bosco Munaku had one career dream. The Jinja Road Police Station based Scene of Crime Officer dreamt of becoming a medical doctor. He envisioned himself perfecting his trade and emerging as one of the best gifts to the profession from West Nile. Fate had a different plan for him. Along the way however, he has not only lived to love a field he joined as a last resort but now dreams of moulding an international career in the same.

After his O-level at Pakwach SS, the soft-spoken detective sergeant studied Biology, Geography, Chemistry and Agriculture for his A-Level at St Aloysius College, Nyapea. But the orphan’s dream journey to medical school was never to materialise.

Throughout 2006, he sat home when an uncle, who was his only source of school fees pulled out, asking him to get alternatives for tertiary education.

The beginning of his journey
It is out of this despair that he walked straight to Masindi Police Training School where he was passed out as a constable in 2007. A year later, he was transferred to the Criminal Investigations Department based at Jinja Road Police Station.

Thanks to his high school science background, in January 2009, he was posted to the Forensics Science Services section, whose headquarters are in Naguru. This posting marked the beginning of a journey he had never imagined himself walk. He scratches his well shaven head, looks round his squeezed and stuffy office and admits in a noticeably polished Alur accent, “It was both exciting and challenging.”

The forensics science department at the Uganda Police Force, just like in any other security force world over, is one of the most technical and critical departments of the uniformed service. Every step, action and move a scene of crime officer makes can either secure freedom or conviction for a suspect.

Munaku, born in Nebbi in 1984, explains, “We tell the truth using science. Forensics is the foundation of investigations.”

However, due to a number of short term courses in scientific investigations from reputable organisations like the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Australian Federal Police, he has manoeuvred through some of the most bizarre, sensitive and life-turning crimes in and out of Kampala city.

As a Scene of Crime Officer, “I cordon off the crime scene so that evidence is not tampered with. Then, I carefully examine the scene; take photographs with a video or recording camera and draw a sketch map detailing the particulars in the scene.”

Bits of the crime scene
He shows Daily Monitor, samples of the work that he used as prosecution evidence in the trial of UPDF Lance Corporal, Herbert Rwakihembo, accused of shooting three women dead late last year in Luzira. The photographs are as graphic as they are horrifying yet Munaku rummages through them like a wedding album.

“If one is not strong, he cannot manage this job. He may not even eat meat or sleep with his wife, we see so many things,” he shares.

“Anyway, I also collect biological evidence like finger-prints and blood which I take for laboratory analysis plus the physical one like knives and fire-arms,” he adds, pulling out a pistol he is using in the investigation of an attempted murder case.

“This can either link the suspect to the crime or exonerate him,” he reveals, taking a long pause as if to assert how much he holds suspects’ fate in his stiff palms.

“We are there to tell the truth using science, that is why we try our best to avoid mistakes. Somebody can suffer in Luzira because of our mistake,” the detective says, adding, “With science, you cannot force things. If the finger prints are not clear, they are written off from investigations.”

Crime missions challenging and tempting
Munaku admits his job comes with a myriad of temptations, pressure and trials, at times life-threatening situations. He cites a case of a minister whose son drank rat poison. For reasons he refuses to divulge, this minister pressured him to turn the truth upside down by disguising the suicide as murder.

“I remained firm and stood for the truth, his wife later called and thanked me,” he happily says of the case that took him eight months to investigate.

Some cases, he notes, have been so complex that he only sits back and thanks God for enabling him get to the bare truth.

He vividly remembers a rich man in Mutungo who was murdered alongside his shamba boy. “The house was so big and the thugs had moved to all the rooms yet the two wives were giving contradicting accounts of events,” he says.

Another example he gives was in 2010, when a soldier in Luzira shot people and no resident could trace him but the detective sergeant finally traced him using blood drops he had left on one of the doors.

His job satisfaction, he says, is when his work secures a conviction for a criminal and also when the same sets a falsely accused suspect free.

Some cases have significantly impacted on his life though. One is of a 22-year-old woman who was raped and dumped for two weeks in Lake Victoria at Port bell in Luzira.

By the time the body was recovered, it had decomposed so much that each touch Munaku and his team made, came with slippery pieces of human flesh. Similar to that, was a decayed body he recovered from a septic tank in Mbuya.

Perhaps, the one that left an indelible mark in his memory was of a minor, killed in a suspected ritual murder whose brain had turned watery and entire body decomposed, almost beyond recognition, yet he had to join doctors for the postmortem.

Also, memorable are the July 2010 Kampala bombings where he received a call to duty at 11pm.

“We worked for a week with Federal Bureau of Investigations which helped us because we were not familiar with bomb related crime,” he recalls.

His passion for the job
As he goes on and on with the crimes he has investigated, the passion for a job whose poor facilitation he decries is noticeable. It is not surprising that during his free time, he researches about forensic science or watches crime scene television channels. Munaku hopes to pursue a degree in forensic science abroad if he lands a scholarship opportunity. For now, he has just completed a degree in Food Technology from Kyambogo University.

His job, to say the least, is one for the passionate and resilient.

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