Court remands woman, son amid divorce battle

The court remanded Ms Bagyeni until February 5 for mention of the case and hearing of the application for bail. In a separate case, the couple’s son, Mr Bosco Sengimana, appeared before the court on January 24, where he was charged with allegedly assaulting his father and remanded until February 10.

Both charges against Ms Bagyeni and her son were brought by Mr Kamaali, who has reportedly demanded that his wife, with whom he has lived for 41 years, should give him all the land titles and vacate their matrimonial home, at Kisigula- Mutundwe in Wakiso District.

In April 2024, Ms Bagyeni filed a divorce case in the High Court Family Division, accusing Mr Kamaali of being violent and threatening her life. Through her lawyers, Ms Bagyeni lists 12 properties she says they jointly acquired and developed. She wants the court to compel Mr Kamaali to share the properties equally with her.

“That petitioner (Bagyeni) complains of the respondent (Kamaal)’s cruel, erratic, unstable and malevolent behaviour towards her, which was characterised by constant belittling in front of their children, housemaids, workers and local leaders. Police officers, tenants and neighbours,” the plaintiff’s complaint reads in part. The case is pending hearing and determination before the Family Court.

Meanwhile, Ms Bagyeni and the couple’s children have petitioned the commander of Kampala Metropolitan Police, seeking his intervention in the matter. They accused police officers handling the case of bias in favour of their father.

In a January 20, 2025 letter, Ms Bagyeni and her daughter, Allen Umimana, accused police officers of being biased in the way they handled her complaint when she accused her husband of beating her. “To our disappointment, the said Kamaali Paul in turn made false allegations against us and our mother and files were opened and we were arrested by the Flying Squad and others.

By those actions an imbalance has been created by the Police at Nateete for which we see no justice delivered to us,” the letter reads in part. In an interview, Ms Umimana claimed that ever since their mother filed the divorce case, their father had resorted to mistreating them with the help of unscrupulous security personnel.

“We have witnessed domestic violence over the years in our family and we treated it as normal. But it reached at time when our father chased our mother from the business and nearly killed her. When our mother decided to move out of the marriage, we stopped pleading with her to stay,” she said.

She called upon the authorities to come to their rescue, saying they were being denied justice. Ms Umimana added: “We were born five and one died, but all of the four are wanted by police on charges we don’t know because we rejected what Mr Kamaali asked us to do, to disown our mother in order to have peace.”

Efforts to get a comment from Mr Kamaali and the police were futile by press time.