By Carol Natukunda

THE Police are investigating the circumstances under which a Primary Four pupil instantly collapsed and died after a teacher reportedly caned him.

Francis Alithum, a pupil of Luzira Progressive Junior School, died on March 14, 2008.

While the school says it was only a small stick that could not cause harm, the boy’s father, Bernard Upenycan, accuses the school of killing his son.

A March 18, 2008 postmortem report from Mulago Hospital, obtained from the father, shows that Alithum died of rheumatic heart disease. However, the school has a separate post-mortem report saying he died of cardiac (heart) failure. The two post-mortem reports have the same patient name, stamp, pathologist’s name and letterhead but different dates and handwriting. The report provided by the school is dated 14th February, a month before the boy died.

Efforts to get clarification from Dr. Kidaga, who carried out the post-mortem, had not yielded results by press time.

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