Daughters beat 89-year-old mother to death over land sale
Mourners gather at a home in Bbale Village, Nyimbwa Sub-county in Luweero District on April 27, 2024 in the aftermath of an incident in which daughters are believed to have killed their 89-year-old mother over a suspected land sale. PHOTO/DAN WANDERA
What you need to know:
- Land related disputes contribute to more than 80 per cent of the cases at the office of the Resident District Commissioners (RDC) in Luweero District.
Residents and authorities at Bbale Village in Luweero District are yet to come to terms with the shocking news of two siblings who reportedly beat up their 89-year-old mother to death over a land sale dispute.
Incident reports suggest the siblings were with two grandchildren as accomplices in the April 26 act.
While the quartet reportedly rushed victim Yowanina Nalujja to a clinic where she was pronounced dead upon arrival, police in Luweero are holding them.
“We have arrested the four suspects on a charge of murder by assault. Preliminary investigations reveal that the four assaulted the 89-year-old woman to death while demanding money she had received after selling a piece of land,” Savannah Regional police spokesperson Sam Twineamazima said on Sunday.
According to him, authorities have since transferred the body to the City Mortuary in Kampala for autopsy.
Meantime, Bbale Village Local Council Secretary for Defense Edward Ssenyonga Tamukedde revealed to Monitor that the four suspects had earlier reported a case where they said the old woman sold a plot of land without consulting them.
“We are still shocked at the sad news because Nalujja has been a calm elderly woman who sold her own property (land), a few days ago. The sad news is that they took the law into their own hands,” he noted on Sunday.
“The old woman was locked inside the house by the four women before she was assaulted. They wanted her to hand over the money from the land sale. We later got information that they rushed the victim to John’s Clinic at Bbowa Village after which she collapsed. We are waiting for a police investigation,” he added.
Bbale Village resident Helen Nabakooza also said the deceased was facing growing pressure as “some of her own children demanded that she surrenders her own land since she was of advanced age.”
Land related disputes contribute to more than 80 per cent of the cases at the office of the Resident District Commissioners (RDC) in Luweero District, according to authorities. The land cases usually involve relatives that fail to amicably resolve wrangles including cases of suspected land grabbing and illegal land related transactions, the Luweero RDC Richard Bwabye told Monitor.
