Acid case stalls over missing police file

By Michael Odeng

The hearing of a case in which a Makerere lecturer is accused of masterminding an acid attack on his wife failed to take off over a missing police file.

Faisal Buyinza, 40, a lecturer of Economics at Makerere University is accused of engineering an acid attack on his wife Hanifa Nakyiryowa who currently is undergoing an operation in London.
 
State prosecutor Peace Birra told court presided over by Olive Kazaarwe Mukwaya that the police had not submitted the file in court.

Buyinza faces charges of attempted murder.

“Buyinza’s file is still held up at Wandegeya police station, therefore we cannot proceed without it,” she said.

Police is holding the file so that they can trace prosecution witnesses and produce them in court to testify against accused lecturer.

This prompted the magistrate to adjourn the case until February 21 for further hearing.

Court has on several occasions issued summoned against the prosecution witnesses to come and give evidence in court on allegation of having tried to cause the death of his (the lecturer’s) wife but in vain.

The court also extended the Makerere don’s bail.

Prosecutors allege that the accused committed the offence on December 11, 2011 at Mugenyi Flats in Bukoto, a Kampala suburb.

Nakiryowa, according to the prosecution, was married to Buyinza for seven years and at the time of the acid attack, she had been having misunderstandings with her husband and was forced to leave home and has since been staying with a friend.

Nakiryowa by then was working as a monitoring and evaluation officer at the Uganda Muslim Supreme Council-UNICEF partnership programme.

Nakiryowa, together with her one-and-a-half-year old daughter, Zurahiya Buyinza, were admitted to Mulago Hospital after sustaining several burns from the attack.

She lost her eyes and nose from the attack.