Three elderly women have won a court battle against their nephew who had for a long time blocked them from accessing burial grounds on a 40-hectare piece of land.
Mbarara High Court in its decision of December 23, 2024, held that Ms Muriel Baingana, Ms Sheeba Rukikaire, and Victoria Lutaaya are entitled to a share of the 40 hectares of land located in Kashari Block 16 Plot 3 in Mbarara District.
Justice Allan Nshimye reasoned that the land in question was customarily owned as family land.
The land was originally owned by the father of the three women, the late Alfred and Eva Katabarirwe.
The three women were sisters of the father of their nephew, Grace Stuart Ibingira, whom they accused of taking over the family land without their consent.
The nephew, Mr Alfred Rutasyangabo Ibingira, took over the said land when his father died in 1995, a move that annoyed his aunties, resulting in a legal battle since he had allegedly also blocked them from accessing the graveyard of their parents.
Justice Nshimye in his decision, largely concurred with three sisters who are in their 70s and 80s, that the land in question was a customary family land and they had a stake in it.
“The defendants being biological daughters of the late Alfred and Eva Katabarirwe acquired an interest by owning land by way of customary tenure,” he ruled.
Justice Nshimye added: “In this case, the late Grace Ibingira obtained a lease on land owned by his siblings as unregistered land under customary tenure without their consent. The justice of this case, therefore, demands that the defendants cannot be trespassers when going to the home stead of their late father or visiting their parent’s graveyard or utilising the land measuring 40 hectares in which they acquired their interest under customary tenure after the passing of their father in 1962.”
The judge also directed that the trio should, going forward, have unfettered access to the said land where their parents were buried and their childhood home since they had reportedly been blocked by their nephew from accessing it.
The three sisters, through their lawyers at Barenzi & Co Advocates, had contended that by the time their father purchased the land in the 1940s, their brother, the late Grace Stuart Ibingira, was only 10 years old and unable to purchase the land.
They had further claimed that their brother Ibingira had processed and registered the land belonging to their father, the late Katabarirwe, into his name, and that by the time of their brother’s death in 1995, the estate of their late father had not been distributed among the beneficiaries who included themselves.
Court records show that the late Ibingira expanded the family's land from the original 40 hectares to 63 hectares by purchasing more land from neighbours.
But the judge, in his judgment, said the family land amounts to 40 hectares that the three sisters have a stake in and not the entire 63 hectares.
