The High Court in Kabale has convicted 45-year-old Damiano Kabahoze of murdering his five-year-old niece, Provia Niyonshuti, in what the judge described as a calculated and “heinous” killing linked to a bitter family land dispute.
Justice Karoli Lwanga Ssemogerere said Kabahoze strangled the child on May 29, 2024, at Kibaya village in Nyakabande sub-county, Kisoro, before secretly dumping her body behind his house two days later.
The girl’s mother, Judith Muhaweimana, told the court that on that fateful morning, she had taken Provia with her to harvest beans in Kibaya. They stopped to roast maize at the home of her mother-in-law. The girl was playing with other children in the compound.
When the mother returned later, she could not find her daughter. One playmate, a two-year-old called SS, turned up crying. The girl’s parents searched the village in vain, then reported the matter to the LC1 chairperson and the nearby police post.
For two days, the community combed the bushes. Radio announcements were made appealing for help.
On May 31, the search party found the small body lying behind Kabahoze’s house, in a garden along a footpath.
The mother testified that the accused, her brother, had previously threatened her over land issues.
“He accused my children and me of eating up his share of the family property,” she said.
A medical officer, Dr Felix Barekye, performed the postmortem at Kisoro hospital. He found skin injuries around the child’s neck and signs of strangulation.
“The probable cause of death was strangulation or suffocation,” he told the court.
The body had started to decompose, and ants had begun eating it.
A canine handler, Corporal Dennis Adii, was brought in with a German shepherd called Grievel. He introduced the dog to the scene. The dog picked up the scent and went directly into one of the bedrooms in one of the houses in the homestead where Kabahoze lived. It sat down, coiled, signalling to him that the scent it had picked from the scene was much concentrated in the room.
The Kabahoze’s wife confirmed to police that the bedroom belonged to her husband. The dog did not track the scent outside that room, meaning the child had likely been inside it for some time.
The investigating officer, Corporal Kansiime, interviewed Kabahoze’s daughter, who said she had seen Provia at her father’s home on the day she disappeared. He also told the court that villagers had reported that Kabahoze claimed he was searching for the child, yet he was seen drinking in a bar that same afternoon.
Kansiime found what he believed was the motive. “The motive for the murder was conflicts over family land,” he testified.
In court, Kabahoze denied killing the child. He told the court in an unsworn statement that he had slept at school on the night she vanished and had been far from home when she died. His lawyers tendered the school attendance register to back his account.
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In the end, Justice Ssemogerere used the medical findings, the canine evidence, and the general timeline to reconstruct what happened.
The judge concluded that Kabahoze found the child playing in the homestead on May 29 after returning from work.
Ssemogerere said the evidence showed she was killed that same day.
“The juvenile had been dead for at least 48 hours by the time her body was recovered on May 31. Her body was kept in Kabahoze’s bedroom before being dumped behind his house early on the third day,” the judge said.
The judge described the murder as intentional.
He said Kabahoze’s testimony was undermined by the school register itself. It showed he had signed out at 5.05 pm on May 29.
“This was a self-serving explanation to remove himself from the vicinity of the alleged crime,” he said. He called the claim that he slept at school “a blatant lie”.
The judge also noted that the accused had initially said his wife and daughter would testify for him, but he later dropped that plan.
The two assessors had called for Kabahoze’s acquittal, saying no witness saw him commit the crime.
But Justice Ssemogerere rejected their assessment.
“This is a heinous crime, murder of a juvenile in which direct evidence is rare,” he wrote. He explained that circumstantial evidence can be as strong as direct proof if it clearly links the accused to the death.
Kabahoze now awaits sentencing.
