Mutilators of 6-year-old albino hand lose appeal

A six-year-old boy, Baraka Samson, cries in pain at Mbeya Regional Referral Hospital where he was admitted after his assailants broke into the house he was sleeping in and chopped off his right hand in March, 2015. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • The three men who were charged with attempted murder were found guilty in 2017 of attacking an albino boy and chopping off his right hand

Dar es Salaam. Three men, who are serving an 18-year-jail sentence for chopping off the hand of a six-year-old albino boy, Baraka Cosmas, and sold it to a carpenter at Malonje Village in Mbozi District, have lost an appeal against their imprisonment in 2017.

Three Justices of the Court of Appeal--Bethuel Mmilla, Rehem Mkuye and Ferdinand Wambali--said circumstantial evidence as well as exhibits tendered in court in support of a prosecution case sufficiently linked the accused with the crime.

Andius Songoloka, Mihambo Kamata and Unela Kuwilu were among five people who were charged with attempted murder and possession of human body parts following the shocking crime at Kipeta Village in Sumbawanga District, Rukwa Region, in March, 2015.

The accused allegedly broke into the house where Baraka was sleeping with his mother, Prisca Shabani, in the midnight of March 24, 2015 and cut off the boy’s right hand after attacking her mother, who had gone outside the house to relieve herself.

The woman fought relentlessly with the assailants, who hit her on the head with an iron bar and left her unconscious.

When she regained consciousness, she found that her child, Baraka, crying in agony with his right hand bleeding profusely. The assailants had chopped off his hand.

Baraka’s father, Cosmas Yoram Songoloka, who was also charged with the crime, but later acquitted for lack of evidence, had gone to sleep at his second wife’s house during the material day. The suspects vanished from the village immediately after the incident. They were arrested days later following an intense manhunt by the police and a special task force formed by the Director of Criminal Investigations. Upon full trial, the High Court, relying on circumstantial evidence and statements the accused recorded with the police, sentenced the accused to 18 years in jail.

In the appeal they filed in 2017, the trio argued that the trial court wrongly convicted them by relying on their statements. They also argued that their extra judicial statement were taken outside the required time.

It was their contention that the court wrongly admitted as evidence the statement of the third appellant, Unela Kuwilu, who had protested the tendering of the document as evidence.

It was Kuwilu, who named, in his statement, the buyer of the chopped hand, a carpenter Sajenti Kalinga. Kalinga had pleaded guilty of possessing human body parts and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

He also revealed how he participated in the plan to attack the victim and how he and the second appellant, Mihambo Kamata, left for Hansekento Village in Mbozi District to sell Baraka’s hand to Sajenti Kalinga.

While admitting that Kuwilu’s statement was wrongly admitted in court as evidence, the judges said the disputed statement contained nothing but the truth about what actually transpired. It was Sajenti Kalinga who led the police to his home in Hansekento Village, Mbozi District where the palm was recovered from a tree.

“We are of considered view that the cautioned statement was indeed a confession worth to be considered by the court,” said the judges.

Then Mbeya Regional Police Commander, Ahmed Msangi, told reporters that Baraka’s hand was recovered from Kalinga days after the arrest of a witchdoctor, Gunela Shinji, at Kipeta Village. Shinji was suspected of involvement in the incident. He said after being pressed, the witchdoctor named Kalinga as the one, who had requested an albino hand for witchcraft rituals.