Former Bududa aspirant jailed for forgery

CRIME

KAMPALA - A court in Kampala has sentenced to jail a former parliamentary aspirant for forgery and impersonation.

Harriet Mukhobeh Kakayi, a former Bududa district Woman MP aspirant, will spend a year behind bars for also uttering false documents and obtaining money by false pretence.

All the four charges are contained in the sentence that Nakawa Chief Magistrate Karemani Jamson Karemera read out to her.

This was after Justice Yasin Nyanzi of the High Court had overturned a judgment in which Nakawa Grade One Magistrate Gimugu KK had acquitted Kakayi of all the offences.

The Director of Public Prosecutions had accused the trial magistrate of failure to properly evaluate as a whole the evidence adduced before him and thereby reaching a wrong decision.

After hearing the DPP's appeal challenging Kakayi's acquittal, Justice Nyanzi said the evidence against Kakayi was overwhelming and blamed the magistrate for failING to properly evaluate it.

He said if the magistrate had done so, he should have convicted the accused as charged.

Now, following her conviction, Kakayi was ordered to refund sh45, 336,486 within six months to her sister Agnes Mukhobeh Nabafu.

The case involved land. It was alleged that Kakayi falsely obtained the money from Orange Uganda Ltd by representing herself to be Nabafu.

Orange Uganda Limited was described as a telephone mobile company that rented the disputed land for ten years for purposes of its erecting a mast at Kamuli village near Namugongo Martyrs' Shrines in Wakiso district.

After he had reversed the trial magistrate's judgment and convicted Kakayi, Justice Nyanzi then ordered that her case file be returned to Nakawa Chief Magistrate's Court with orders for him to only pass an appropriate sentence upon hearing her mitigations, if any.

Wearing a floral dress, Kakayi shed tears after the Chief Magistrate announced the sentence.

She said she is unable to pay the money within six months as ordered by the High Court. 

Kakayi and the complainant, Nabafu, who is currently residing in the UK, are biological sisters of the same parents.

According to the prosecution, their biological sisterhood became sour when Kakayi assumed her sister's names and entered into an agreement with the mobile telephone company over land rentals.

Nabafu told the court in her evidence that when she wanted to buy land in Uganda, her sister found a piece of land for her in 2005, she sent her a total of US$3570 worth of the property whose title Kakayi allegedly used to obtain the money for Orange Uganda Limited purporting that she was Nabafu whereas not.