Former Butaleja district woman representative Cerinah Nebanda was a young but out spoken legislator. On many occasions, she tackled government on issues like corruption, youth unemployment, increasing poverty levels among others. She was the youngest woman to be elected to Parliament and she died aged 24.
Some Members of Parliament suspected Nebanda to have been poisoned, as she was a vocal critic of the government, and that the state was “arresting anyone suspected to be propagating that line among those arrested were two MPs, one of whom was Mohamed Nsereko
A government chemist’s post mortem report stated that cocaine, heroin, alcohol, and several other chemicals were found in Nebanda’s blood, intestinal tract, and tissue samples.
On January 2,2013, police announced that they had opened an investigation into Nebanda’s death and linked it to what they called “a narcotic drug syndicate operating in a number of countries including Uganda, Pakistan, and South Sudan” On January 4th, Nebanda’s boyfriend, Adam Suleiman Kalungi, was arrested in Kenya and extradited to Uganda for questioning by police. In July 2014, he was acquitted of the criminal charges surrounding her death
Now Government has said that it has not dropped the idea of carrying out an inquest into the death of Nebanda, despite the arrest and conviction of a key suspect in her death five years ago.
The Deputy Attorney General, Hon. Mwesigwa Rukutana, told Parliament that the inquest was hampered by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), who held onto all the required files during the prosecution.
MP Nebanda, 24, who was serving her first term in the House, died at Mukwaya General Hospital, where she was rushed on the evening of 14 December 2012. Police later attributed the legislator’s death to drug consumption.
MPs and the public demanded that foreign intelligence investigators be called in to probe the death. Police arrested the legislator’s acquaintance, Adam Kalungi, who was charged and convicted of manslaughter in January 2014.
During the Tuesday sitting, Rukutana said that the Chief Justice had appointed Justice Paul Mugamba as the coroner to head the inquest into the death of the MP.
“There are still some procedural technicalities and hence the inquest is yet to start. There was demand to prosecute the suspects and the DPP rushed to court,” said Rukutana.
Rukutana was responding to an issue raised by Jinja East MP, Paul Mwiru, who wondered why government was delaying to release the report of investigations into the MPs’ death.
“Everything the coroner would have used was used by the DPP in court. The coroner found it very difficult to proceed,” Rukutana added.
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga gave the Attorney General two weeks to present to Parliament an update on the matter.
