Nine officers arrested after police steal from robbers

CRIME | An ill-fated stash of Shs192 million was stolen three times in the space of hours, leading to the arrest of the robbers, police patrol officers who intercepted them, and officers who received the exhibit at the station.

Last week, the Police foiled a robbery attempt as men travelling in a Toyota Noah robbed Shs192 million from a cashier from Give and Take hardware in Nateete.

The robbers targeted Shaturah Namata as she took the money to the bank, bundled her into their waiting vehicle and drove her together with the bag containing cash to Kiwanga in Mukono District where they dumped her.

When Namata was dumped, she cried for help and luckily, a boda boda rider showed up.

She would later jump onto the boda boda and give a chase to the vehicle that belonged to the robbers.

Other boda boda riders joined the chase.

Sensing that they were being followed, the robbers branched to a secluded location where they managed to change the vehicle number plates before embarking on their journey again.

However, the boda boda operators who had noticed features of the vehicle tracked it down to Bweyogerere and on sensing that they had been discovered, the occupants drove off towards the Northern Bypass.

As the boda boda riders gave a chase, they were joined by a police patrol vehicle that later shot and injured the driver of the vehicle, leading to the arrest of two occupants as the third took off.

The bag containing the money was later recovered and exhibited.

Steal from thief

However, it later emerged that during the arrest melee, police officers on the patrol truck had quick, long fingers and stole some of the money.

This website has learnt that when the money was taken to Kira Police Station, the officers at the case file desk took it upon themselves to count the cash exhibit.

Source privy to the investigation say that this was yet another a ploy to steal part of the money.

“The officers poured the money on the floor under the pretext of counting it,” a source told Nile Post.

After counting, the officers reported to their bosses that they had found Shs160 million but this account was contradicting with what robber victim Namata had said.

The victim had reported that she had Shs192 million in the bag that she was meant to take to the bank and the discrepancy forced police to carry out investigations into the matter.

Investigators were puzzled on where the balance of Shs32 million had gone, since by the time the bag was recovered from the robbers, it was still intact.

This website has separately learnt that investigators made use of CCTV cameras that showed that while under the pretext of counting, some of the cash was stolen by police officers at Kira Division Police Station counter.

Investigations have since led to the recovery of Shs20 million of the missing Shs32 million.

Kampala Metropolitan deputy police spokesperson Luke Owoyesigyire confirmed that investigations into the theft are ongoing.

“We have a total of nine suspects in custody, all of whom are police officers," he said.

"They will first be tried by disciplinary as we wait for the outcome of the disciplinary proceedings to see if they will be charged criminally in courts of law,” Owoyesigyire added.