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Body of boy found without head, toes
What you need to know:
Residents say the incident has reawakened fears of kidnappers involved in ritual sacrifice
Residents of Butanza-Kisule Village in Katikamu Sub-county, Luweero District, yesterday woke up to shocking news after they discovered the body of an eight-year-old boy, earlier reported missing in a garden.
The body did not have a head, fingers and toes.
While the residents associate the gruesome murder to child sacrifice, the police said they await the postmortem report to guide the investigations as they hunt for those who committed the crime.
“We have taken the body for postmortem but we call upon anybody with information that can guide the investigation to pass it to the police. Avoid rumours and unfounded talks but cooperate with the police,” Ms Sarah Kataike, the district criminal investigations officer, told the residents gathered near the home where the child went missing from the parents.
Ms Prossy Nabatanzi, the mother of the deceased, revealed that her son, Yasin Sseruga, was last seen on Saturday at around 3pm as he played with her younger sister in the family compound.
“As they played, somebody approached them and convinced the girl to go and get something from the house. When she returned, her brother and the unidentified man had disappeared from the compound,” she revealed.
“We reported the case to our village chairperson and we were also advised to go to Wobulenzi Police Station to report the case of the missing boy. The village mounted a search in the nearby areas but we did not get the missing boy,” she added.
Mr Godfrey Kafeero, the village chairperson, revealed that when the village tried to search the surrounding areas, they got stuck because there was no clue about the direction that the suspected kidnappers could have taken.
“They took advantage of the young girl and sister of the kidnapped boy who could not give any details. The young girl could not even describe the person who convinced her to go into the house,” he said.
Mr Kafeero explained that one of the residents only identified as Med discovered the lifeless body of a child tied between two tree trunks with a missing head as he approached his garden about 500 meters from the home where the child had been reported missing. “He quickly raised an alarm, alerting the residents. We are confused as residents because the intentions of the suspected assailants are not known. They manage to bring back the body in a place where we can easily locate it,” he says.
Ms Regina Nabachwa, another resident, said the incident has reawakened the fears of suspected child kidnappers involved in ritual sacrifice.
“This is a painful experience as a parent. They did not bother to call the parents for possible ransom. The suspects must have targeted the human body parts,” Ms Nabachwa claimed in an interview.
Recent incident
On August 31, police recovered the body of a three-year-old child hanging in a banana plantation in Kanyogoga Village, Luweero Sub-county. The deceased identified as Innocent Adriko had been left under the care of a 15-year-old by their mother, who had travelled.