Police in Nakaseke are holding a man accused of strangling his one-year-old daughter to death and attempting to kill his wife. The suspect is Hetchko Sserunjogi, a resident of Katale zone in Semuto town council in Nakaseke district.
Sserunjogi is in trouble for killing his daughter, Pretty Nabatanzi and attempting to kill his wife only identified as Nabatte in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Moses Ssengendo, a neighbor to the couple, says Sserunjogi returned home drunk at around 2:00pm and picked up a quarrel with his wife.
Sserunjogi fought with his wife and tried to strangle her but she managed to escape and sought held from her neighbors. Ssengendo says that by the time they arrived, Sserunjogi had already strangled the minor to death and was sitting by the bedside sheepishly.
He says that they immediately alerted Police, which swung into action and picked the suspect. Justus Asiimwe, the Nakaseke District Police Commander, says they rushed to the scene and picked up the suspect but his wife was in hiding for fear for her life.
They have handed over the baby's body to Semuto Health Center IV for postmortem as they track down Nabatte to help police investigations into the matter. Cases of domestic violence are still persistent in Uganda.
A recent police report shows that 163 women lost their lives in 2016 resulting from domestic violence compared to 109 women who died in 2010. Child torture increased to 808 in 2016 from 660 cases in 2010.
Police blames the soaring cases of violence against women and children to poverty, land related wrangles, drug and alcohol abuse among other causes.
