Probe the source of human remains

There has been a spike in the number of human skulls discovered in the course of criminal investigations lately. Recent examples include John Magombe, who was found with three skulls in a shrine in February 2023 and convicted in June under the Prevention and Prohibition of Human Sacrifice Act 2021.

More recent cases include that of Tabula Lujja, who is accused of taking part in the killing of Buganda’s Ndiga clan leader, Daniel Bbosa, early this year. A police raid at a shrine said to belong to Tabula uncovered 17 human skulls. In a disturbing trend, there have been more discoveries of these human remains by police in subsequent raids.

The source of these skulls remains a mystery at best as the perpetrators remain tightlipped. There are only two reasons why anyone would be in possession of so many human skulls; either they committed a string of murders, or they have been hard at work desecrating burial grounds.

People involved in these kinds of criminal enterprise have no room in our society, which begs the question, how have we allowed rampant murders and practitioners of ritual sacrifice to flourish to an extent that tens of people or their remains keep ending up in the so-called shrines? The law provides for a life sentence for those found in possession of body parts.

Creation of public awareness, community policing and deterrent punishments should make the vice of human sacrifice impossible or too costly to commit. However, first the police need to get down to the bottom of the matter on the source of human skulls.

Those arrested or caught in the act must, as part of the investigations, explain how they came to be in possession of the skulls. For each skull recovered, the person found in possession must be tasked to identify every individual from whom the skull was harvested.

In that way, we will not have piles of skulls discovered in shrines that then become nameless and faceless statistics.

With the growth and entrenchment of practices that have criminals collecting body parts en masse, the value attached to human life in this country is in constant decline.

Unless we make these perpetrators accountable, murderous and clandestine activities will continue, with quack traditional healers and their clients continuing to disappear people unabated in the countryside and stockpiles of skulls ending up in places they should not be.

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