25-year-old woman kidnapped, murdered in Lira

By Charles Etukuri

POLICE in Lira is investigating circumstances under which a 25-year-old woman whose decomposing body was found dumped in a maize plantation.

Sylvia Osinya an employee of Fresh Horizon Ltd, a company contracted by Uganda Breweries to buy sorghum in Northern Uganda recently went missing. By the time of her death, she was working as an administrator in the company.

Osinya’s relatives were still shocked by the news of her death on Friday. A cousin Francis Musoni Okiria said he last had a chat with her on Facebook on October 22. 

“Everything seemed okay and we looked forward to seeing each other but we were shocked to hear she was dead,” Okiria said.

Another friend Agnes Arebo Ebamu had talked to her on the evening of 31st October when she was last seen alive. 

“She did not look troubled,” Ebamu said.

According to a friend, she left the house where she was staying with a colleague and carried a flat iron. She wanted to first go to office to pin a notice given to her by her superior and later proceed to her boyfriend’s home.

Detectives in Lira say that her boyfriend had sent her a message asking her to go and help him with laundry. It remains unclear what exactly happened along the way.

One thing that’s for certain is that she never reached her workplace. Could she have been kidnapped along the way?

Okiria said the family received a call from her manager last Tuesday informing them that Osinya was missing from her workplace. 

“He wanted to find out whether she was in the village,” Okiria added.

Her employer Stephen Wekyewa said they reported a missing person’s case and also informed the relatives.

“Police however called us on Thursday to inform us they had recovered a body and we positively identified it as hers and it had decomposed,” he says.

She says the deceased had been working with them since September 6th.

Investigators in Lira are now working hard to try and unearth what exactly transpired that Saturday morning.

Close sources say police has lined up a number of people including those who were close to the deceased for interrogation. 

Other sources however claim that shortly before Osinya went missing, she had been embroiled in a work dispute with colleagues in the purchasing section who she accused of inflating bills.

Police will also question her boyfriend who has yet to been named.

She was buried in Serere on Saturday.