Police and political leaders in Mpigi District in central Uganda have said they are to conduct DNA tests on 17 human skulls dug up from an abandoned shrine in Kabanga Village, Mpigi Town Council.
Mr Hassan Kasibante, the Mpigi deputy resident district commissioner, who is the understudy security chairman for the district, said they are hopeful that geneticists and pathologists will unravel the mystery surrounding the craniums.
The head bones were discovered in four metallic cases first sighted on Sunday by teenagers fetching firewood in a bushy abandoned homestead of one Tabula Bbosa Lujja, a resident wanted by police over the killing of Ndiga Clan leader Daniel Bbosa on February 25.
Lujja was a contender for the seat and vanished shortly after unknown assailants shot Bbosa dead in the Kampala suburb of Lungujja.
A resident identified as a close friend of Lujja reportedly vanished after investigators began questioning persons of interest in relation to the macabre findings.
The discovery of the skulls has sparked a flurry of activity in the usually sleepy hamlet of Kulumba Hill, with law enforcement and intelligence operatives spending time talking to people for any useful leads.
They have interviewed multiple individuals, among them residents and elected leaders, in a desperate bid to establish the identities of the dead persons, where they hailed from, how and why the skulls ended up at a wanted man’s residence.
“We plan to take the skulls to Makerere [University College of Health Science or Mulago [National Referral Hospital] for pathologists and geneticists to help us carry out DNA to find out whether there is a direct match with descendants of Tabula Lujja, or [if] they (skulls) were picked from somewhere else,” Deputy RDC Kasibante said in an interview yesterday.
One of the metallic suitcase where some of the human skulls were recovered on July 28, 2024. PHOTO | BRIAN ADAMS KESIIME
They hope expert analysis of the craniums will help decode the age and gender of the deceased and possibly when the people died.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid, or DNA, is the hereditary material in living organisms, including humans, according to a definition gleaned on the website of the United States National Library of Medicine.
The test, among others, helps establish relations through gene matching.
Back to Mpigi, police on a second day, yesterday, failed to find a stronger excavator to plough through the earth at the crime scene in the hope of digging up more human remains.
Volunteers instead used pick axes, hoes and spades to open the hard, clay-type earth, abandoning the exercise when searing temperatures connived with hunger to enervate them.
Police said they are investigating how the skulls ended up at the shrine on Kulumba hill and whether they were there before Mr Lujja departed the place or were brought afterwards.
With no resident or Ndiga clan member reported missing, detectives were searching for possible clues on the identity and origins of persons whose skulls were recovered and the whereabouts of their remains.
Detectives are also looking into whether the skulls belong to individuals decapitated, possibly elsewhere, or picked from burial grounds distant from the site now taped off as a scene of crime.
Some locals who spoke to Monitor yesterday said the skulls could have been looted from burial sites away from Kabanga Village while others suspect that the bones were picked from Luweero Triangle, where a five-year war that brought President Museveni to power in 1986, claimed thousands.
“In our village, no family has complained that graves of their relatives were tampered with, not even from the neigbouring villages. It is possible that the skulls were collected from other places, for reasons we don’t know, and brought to our area,” said Ms Alice Musisi, the village chairperson.
Police officers gather at the cave-like hole at Kabanga Village, Mpigi District where four metallic suitcases full of human skulls were recovered. PHOTO | BRIAN A KESIIME.
The purpose of stocking the more than a dozen headbones still puzzles residents, local leaders, and police.
Yesterday, Ssenga Nabakooza Lulanama and her husband Aligewesa Jjumba – who are both traditional healers - visited the site and eventually led angry residents to destroy Lujja’s house and one of the three shrines that was still standing.
Jjumba disowned Lujja, saying he is not among the registered traditional healers in the country.
Claims against Lujja remain unverified.
His whereabouts remain unknown and police said he is a man of interest to help with inquiries into the killing of Bbosa.
Detectives yesterday said they now additionally want Lujja to explain how four metallic cases containing 17 skulls ended up stacked in a hole inside one of the shrines at a residence said to be his.
It is unclear if Lujja doubled as a traditional healer, many of whom have been named in various annual police crime reports as masterminds of child sacrifice and mysterious deaths.
Reports
The reports show the widespread presence of both traditional healers and witch doctors, especially in the central region, with others accused of sexually assaulting female clients under various pretexts.
In 2018, leaders in Mubende District sought a ban on traditional healers there, arguing that the adverts they run showing they have supernatural powers to enrich their clients quickly were false, misleading and diverting the population from hard work.
But the problem of questions lingering over the activities of traditional healers spreads its wings beyond.
In February 2019, police in Luweero District with the help of residents stormed the shrines belonging to a prominent traditional healer in Butiikwa Village, Kikyusa Sub-county, and set alight nine shrines.
This was after he was accused of killing a resident in a suspected ritual murder.
When police confronted the traditional healer in a bid to search his shrines, he put up strong resistance, but he was overpowered.
Scene of crime officers said they were shocked by what they discovered: a mutilated human body and hundreds of human bones dug out of eight shallow graves.
During interrogation by police, the suspect said his accomplices took an adult male to his shrine for ritual sacrifice.
Some clients in claims we could not independently verify said traditional healers use remains of the dead to cast spells on enemies of their customers.
Similarly, a traditional healer in Kisoga Village, Nazigo Sub-county, Mukono District, was in 2018 arrested after five bodies were found buried at his shrine.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment by Mukono High Court while a man in Bbaale sub-county, Kayunga District, was in 2021 arrested after he allegedly killed two of his children in a ritual sacrifice murder.
He confessed to the act, claiming he was promised Shs2m. Still in Kayunga, a man named John Ndolwa was arrested with human remains and he confessed that selling craniums is a brisk business for him.
He told detectives that he had dealt in human skulls for more than five years and that one skull by then was costing between Shs140,000 and 170,000.
The 10 unanswered questions
- Who are the deceased?
- Do the craniums belong to murder victims or were they stolen from graves elsewhere?
- How did the skulls end up encased and buried at a shrine linked to Tabula Lujja, separately wanted by police over the shooting dead of the Ndiga Clan leader Daniel Bbosa?
- Were the head bones deposited there when Lujja was around or after he left?
- To what use were they being applied or are they to be applied?
- Why are police who can marshal any resource to subdue protests failing to secure excavators to dig up the crime scene?
- Might there be other skulls or even actual remains of the deceased interred with the premises?
- Who are the people reported in the past to congregate with Tabula Lujja to worship spirits at the shrine?
- Why has one of the named best friends of Lujja vanished from the village following the discovery of the skulls?
- Where do the investigations go from here?