October 9 each year is Uganda’s Independence Day but ironically, for one young woman in Ibanda district, the decision to break into her employer’s till on the day to unlawfully take sh77,000, cost her freedom. 

She will now have to pay for ‘defiling’ the day and accessing her boss’s money without authorisation by serving time at Nyabuhikye Prison.  

Amutuhire confessed to stealing the money from the counter at NK Bar in Kacwampare, Rugoba in Nyabuhikye sub-county, where she worked as a bar attendant.  

She was jailed for six months by the Ibanda Grade One Magistrate's Court.  

Theft contravenes sections 254(i) and 261 of the Penal Code Act and carries a maximum of 10 years on conviction.  

I’m guilty 

While appearing before her worship Esther Murungi, the then suspect had at first played stubborn.  

However, the 21-year-old changed her mind, accepting the offence after the magistrate explained she risked getting a heavier sentence if she insisted on innocence needlessly.  

Also, the compelling evidence against her from the first prosecution witness and her former boss Wilbroad Mutabaruka, seems to have crushed her stubbornness, prompting her to plead guilty to the crime. 

“You have been convicted on your own plea of guilty for the crime of theft contrary to sections 254(i) and 251 of the Penal Code Act. I hereby sentence you to six months in prison, less of the time you have spent on remand,” pronounced the magistrate following Amutuhire’s guilty plea.  

The six-month jail term was as the prosecution and defendant's prayers for a deterrent punishment; and ignored the two months that the convict had prayed for.  

“You need to be removed from the community and go where you can learn skills for self-reliance, said Murungi, advising the convict to embrace skills development programmes like handcraft making and weaving while in prison.