{UAH} Hi-tech robbers puzzle Entebbe road village

Hi-tech robbers puzzle Entebbe road village

News

SUNDAY, 16 MARCH 2014 22:33

WRITTEN BY ZURAH NAKABUGO

2 COMMENTS

Achilles Baguma pointing at his home that thugs broke into

All the ingredients for a nightmarish dream were there. It was in the dead of the night.

Armed robbers had entered into Achilles Baguma’s apartment at the Katale (Jomayi) estate, Seguku, 10 kilometres on the Kampala-Entebbe road.

They had quietly found their way into his bedroom and even watched him sleep for a while, before waking him up and demanding money.

It had seemed like a dream, a bad dream; but it was real.

With police investigations providing no conclusive answers, the 24-year-old Baguma can only hazard a guess as to how, in January, robbers entered his apartment without breaking past his aluminum door.

“I can’t tell exactly how thugs broke into the house,” says Baguma, two months after he was robbed. “I highly suspect they used master keys since none of my doors or padlocks were broken.”

Baguma said only one of the four apartments neighbouring his was left untouched during the robbery, after the assailants realised that it was housing five men who could have held their own during the attack.

According to Baguma, each of the apartments that were robbed had single occupants, making it easy for the robbers to prevail and take whatever they wanted unhindered.

Baguma's story

“Some people suspect the thugs use witchcraft (juju) to make us asleep and they enter without us hearing or suspecting anything. This was revealed by one of my neighbours who were also robbed and in the morning she found juju at the entrance of her house.

On the day they broke into my house, they grabbed my phone to prevent me from communicating for assistance. I suspect some of the robbers are from the nearby places because after waking me up in the darkness, they torched directly into my eyes and forced me to cover my face. I tried to peep at them but I didn’t recognise their faces. They were dressed in black attire, covered their faces with masks and were holding guns, knives, pangas and other sharp objects.

They were four robbers; two entered my house and two stayed outside monitoring the situation to make sure that my neighbours didn’t run out since they had attacked them before and locked them inside. When I told them that I am a student and don’t have money, they asked for my wallet and stole Shs 150,000 which was there.

They insisted and demanded more and also threatened to kill me if I refused. One of the robbers remained in the bedroom and put me at the gun point while threatening to kill me if I dared to make noise. I obeyed their rules since my life was in their hands. They later asked me if there were other people in the house, but they realised that I was alone. They took the keys from my bedroom and opened other rooms.

They swept my sitting room by robbing everything which was there, like a 32-inch flat screen television, computers, home theatre, microwave, two suitcases of clothes and 15 pairs of shoes. My neighbours were also robbed of televisions, laptops, cameras, gas cylinder and DVD players.

They also asked me to direct them to the switch for the sensor security light which they switched off. They opened the front door and the gate and parked all my property in their vehicle which was stationed outside.

It was a big gang of organised robbers who robbed all the three apartments within less than 30 minutes.”

Attacks rise, police dither

When all the victims from the three apartments finally got up to assess the extent of the attack, they found out that the robbers had cut the barbed wire fence and jumped inside the compound. The robbers had also inflicted cuts on the face and head of one of the residents when he attempted to attack them.

The residents say several homes in the area are robbed each month, while cars parked in the open are often vandalised. The attacks are so regular that residents opted to build a station for the police.

Some of the house at Jomayi estate Seguku, where thugs rob daily

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“Up to now, the thugs are still attacking us one by one and police has not given us any security in the area,” Baguma said. “We built for the police a modern community police post but they refused to use it, saying that it still lacks a few things to be complete.”

Another estate resident, Ivan Kakooza, says he was recently attacked by thugs who jumped over his fence at night and vandalised his wife’s car. He suspects that maids and builders in the area are conniving with thugs.

“We also suspect that shamba boys, people who fetch water for our houses and boda-boda cyclists connive with thugs by giving them particulars of properties in our houses. We suspected this when a young boy of my neighbour identified their shamba boy Emma as one of thugs that attacked his father,” he said.

According to Kakooza, residents at one point hired sniffer dogs at Shs 60,000 to track suspects after one of the robberies but they failed to arrest any. Baguma says they now have a self-imposed curfew in the area since people can’t move safely beyond 8pm.

He said the robbers attack people moving at night without sparing those moving in their vehicles. Drivers are mainly targeted at their gates while they wait for family members inside to open.

Appeal to higher authorities

Residents say a police file, SD Ref. 04/17/01/14, is open at Bukwenda police station in Seguku to deal with robbery cases at the estate in Seguku. However, they complain that nothing productive has come out of the file.

According to some of the residents, even the police says they are fed up of dealing with robbers in the area since the residents have failed to help investigators identify suspects. The residents also accuse some personnel within the police of conniving with boda boda cyclists, maids and shamba boys to acquire information about their properties and later robbing them.

The officer in charge of Bukwenda police station, Isma Kifudde, refuted the allegations, saying more than a month has passed without the station receiving any reports of robberies in the area.

“It’s true people were attacked sometime back, but we had a meeting with the community and rectified all the loopholes which were used by the thugs and the residents are now safe. We are also patrolling the area daily to make sure the place is safe,” he said.

Asked about claims that the officers don’t want to use the police post constructed for them within the estate, Kifudde said they were using it while waiting for the residents to open it officially.

Kifudde also refuted allegations that police officers in the area connive with robbers. He said the officers under him were diligently performing their duties of protecting the residents. The locals now say their hope is in “higher authorities” intervening to help secure their besieged area.

zurah@observer.ug

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Gwokto La'Kitgum

"Even a small dog can piss on a tall Building", Jim Hightower

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