By Weswa Ronnie
NATIONAL
Nine Police officers attached to Kira Road Central Police Station have been arrested on allegations of stealing part of the money recovered from robbers.
The police officers are said to have siphoned off Shs32M out of the Shs192M recovered by the police on Friday, 12th April, 2024 from thugs who had robbed it from a one Shaturah Namata while on her way to bank the money.
Kampala Metropolitan deputy police spokesperson, Luke Owoyesigyire confirmed that investigations into the theft are ongoing.
“We have a total of nine suspects in custody, all of whom are police officers,” he said.
“They will first be tried by disciplinary Committee as we wait for the outcome of the disciplinary proceedings to see if they will be charged criminally in courts of law,” Owoyesigyire added.
BACKGROUND
Friday last week, the Police foiled a robbery attempt when men travelling in a Toyota Noah robbed Shs192M from a cashier of Give and Take hardware in Nateete.
The robbers targeted Shaturah Namata as she took the money to the bank, bundled her into their waiting vehicle and drove her together with the bag containing cash to Kiwanga in Mukono District where they dumped her.
When Namata was dumped, she cried for help and luckily, a boda boda rider showed up.
She jumped on the boda boda and gave chase to the vehicle that belonged to the robbers.
Sensing that they were being followed, the robbers branched to a secluded location where they managed to change the vehicle number plates before embarking on their journey again.
However, the boda boda operators who had noticed features of the vehicle tracked it down to Bweyogerere and on sensing that they had been discovered, the occupants drove off towards the Northern Bypass.
As the boda boda riders gave chase, they were joined by a police patrol vehicle that later shot and injured the driver of the vehicle, leading to the arrest of two occupants with the third taking off.
The bag containing the money was recovered and exhibited.
However, when the money was taken to Kira Police Station, the officers at the case file desk took it upon themselves to count the cash exhibit.
Source privy to the investigation says that this was yet another ploy to steal part of the money.
“The officers poured the money on the floor under the pretext of counting it,” a source revealed.
After counting, the officers reported to their bosses that they had found Shs160 million but this account contradicted with what the robber victim had said.
The victim had reported that she had 192 million shillings in the bag that she was meant to take to the bank and the discrepancy forced police to carry out investigations into the matter.
Investigators were puzzled on where the balance of Shs32 million had gone, since by the time the bag was recovered from the robbers, it was still intact.
The investigators made use of CCTV cameras that showed that while under the pretext of counting, some of the cash was stolen by police officers at Kira Division Police Station counter.
Investigations have since led to the recovery of Shs20 million of the missing Shs32 million.
