Police, parents disagree on cause of fire that burnt twins

Police have locked horns with parents of twins who were burnt in a house to near death on Monday in Nalumunye, Jomayi Estates. The children who were burnt are two years and 10 months old, a boy and a girl.

According to the twins' mother Ms Betty Namanya, the fire started at around 4pm on Monday when she was at Kitalya Prison to visit her husband Mr January Bamanzi.

Mr Bamanzi who is involved in a land wrangle in Lubowa has been at Kitalya since Friday last week over failure to produce his title deeds.

Whereas police insist that the fire was caused by short-circuit in the ceiling, Ms Namanya believes it was an arson attack.

“You can imagine the double jeopardy. You are at Kitalya to visit your jailed husband and news comes in that your children have been burnt in the house,” she said.

“I had to leave Kitalya in a haste, devastated but composed because a double tragedy had befallen us. I made several calls to my neighbours who assisted to take my children to a nearby clinic, it was horrifying,” Ms Namanya added.

She says before the house caught fire, some people who were not known to the area were seen moving around their house.

“That a day before the fire there were people strange to us moving around my home and they were later understood to have been behind the arrest of my husband,” Ms Namanya said.

Mr Bamanzi said that the burning of his house raises suspicion and he described it as shocking.

“It is ridiculous that the police want to insist that the fire started from the ceiling which is not true. This fire was deliberately started by people who want me to surrender my land titles,” he said.

Mr Bamanzi was on Friday last week remanded to Kitalya Prison by Buganda Road Magistrate’s Court over concealing deeds contrary to section 278 of the penal code. He says he deliberately refused to surrender the title deeds for fear of being confiscated and fraudulently duplicated.