Police registers 2,500 murder cases between January and June

The Police have registered 2,452 murder cases between January and June this year.
The means each day between January and June, police registered an average of 13 murder cases.
The Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) statistics show that the cases are more than half of the total recorded last year. A total of 4,718 murder cases were registered in 2019.
This means if the murder trends continue at the same rate, there will be an increase in 2020 annual homicide cases.
The director of Criminal Investigations, Ms Grace Akullo, said Rwizi police region that covers the districts of Greater Mbarara registered the highest cases.
“Rwizi region registered the highest cases of homicide totalling 410 cases. Most of the cases were investigated and prosecuted. A few cases that are still pending are related to ritual murders,” she said at the opening of a 14-day homicide investigations refresher training at the CID Training School in Kampala yesterday.
The training, which is funded by the Justice Law Order and Sector, is intended to give detectives more knowledge on how to follow procedures while investigating homicide cases. Homicide cases are among the most difficult offences to investigate and prosecute.
A murder case could have more than one victim killed. For instance, if a gunman shoots three people dead at one scene, it is registered as one murder case.
Land wrangles, theft, family disagreements and suspicion of witchcraft are some of the major causes of murder.
The report also shows that majority of the murder cases were conducted through a range of methods such as strangulation and iron bar hitting among others. At least 1,660 cases were registered in this category.
The second cause of murders were mob action. The report shows that 411 cases were due to mob action.
At least 195 cases of murder were as a result of domestic violence while 97 incidents were attributed to shooting. Murder by use of fire contributed 31 cases.
Police investigated 58 cases of murder by poisoning. 
Ms Akullo said some police officers have failed to execute their roles because they accept bribes from the complainants and the accused persons.
She said the training of detectives have helped the police get remarkable success in investigating homicide cases in all regions of the country. 

Homicide cases
A total of 4,718 cases of homicide were reported to police by the end of 2019 compared
to 4,497 cases in 2018, giving a 4.9 per cent increase. 
The motives behind such killings include land wrangles, people taking the law into their own hands, family misunderstandings, crime of passion and business rivalry.