Uganda Police in Jinja City say “a pastor and his wife have confessed to killing their landlord’s four-year-old girl and led detectives to two separate locations where her remains were recovered at the weekend.”
Prophet Joseph Sserubiri and Felista Namaganda of Deliverance and Healing Ministries in Kakira Market Zone, Kakira Town Council, told detectives that they killed Trinity Nakisuyi Nabirye Zabeela.
Nabirye went missing from her parents’ home in the same zone on September 30 and the case was threatening to go cold until, at the residents’ insistence, police declared the couple persons of interest in their investigation into the crime.
The couple later led detectives to Wanyange Village on the shores of Lake Victoria where Nabirye’s skull was recovered- and then to a sugarcane plantation in Kakira where her decomposed torso was found.
The Kiira Region police spokesman, Mr James Mubi said the couple was arrested on December 4 after the Pastor’s phone was tracked and blood stains recovered from a room he reportedly rented a day after the deceased disappeared.
“For two months since the girl disappeared, police have been on the ground tracing for her whereabouts with the help of her parents and our investigations indicate that the couple sacrificed her, a crime they have confessed to,” Mr Mubi said.
The suspects’ landlord, Mr John Mulodi who was the father of the deceased, declined to speak to this reporter following the incident.
Some many residents told Media that the couple rented Mr Mulodi’s garage which they later turned into a ‘Church’ in which the crime reportedly took place.
A resident who identified himself as Mr Godfrey Maliyamungu asked the “police to rev up their inquests on some born again church leaders with false prophecies that he said have led to disunity among the flock.”
“There is freedom of worship; however, authorities need to regulate such mushrooming churches. In fact, they should be subjected to paying taxes,” he said.
But Kiira region police spokesperson Mr Mubi “appealed to the public and local leaders to first find out where and why a person hails from to stay in their area before they are accepted to be part of the community.”
