The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The high-profile murder trial of Molly Katanga took another dramatic turn during cross-examination on Thursday, as the defense, led by lawyers Elison Karuhanga and MacDusman Kabega, aggressively challenged the prosecution’s evidence.
The morning session saw key rebuttals against the police’s digital forensics expert, Enoch Kanene. The defense questioned the integrity of his analysis, particularly his claim of 40 calls in his evidence matrix that were missing from the telecom company’s call logs. Karuhanga accused Kanene of fabricating evidence, saying he was “using his fertile imagination to cook evidence.”
Initially, Karuhanga had put it to Kanene on whether evidence stored in digital form is easy to manipulate or delete to which he said it is possible in case one is the user. Moving on further, Karuhanga asked Kanene to pick on of the phone exhibits, an analogue cellular, also known as a Ka-torch, which belongs to Henry Katanga and holds his Airtel line.
Karuhanga then asked him to check for any missed calls from Timothy Nyangweso, another witness who claims to have called Katanga several times on the fateful day, to which Kanene confirmed there was no call from Nyangweso at any time.
Karuhanga then asked if the Ka-torch could make a social media -WhatsApp call and Kinene said it was impossible.
To make matters worse for the prosecution, Karuhanga then asked Kinene to check on the MTN line as well for Timothy Nyangweso’s calls to Katanga and still they could not be found.
Kinene in further grilling could also not locate the call data records of Denise Nayebare whom he initially claimed had made three calls to Molly Katanga on November 1 from Kololo areas.
“ I want to put it to you Mr Kanene that none of these phone calls appear in your call data record. This is an absolute concoction of yours.”
Another critical point in the defense’s argument was the forensic blood analysis.
Referring to the testimony of the Head of Police Forensics, Andrew Mubiru, the defense asserted that all the blood found at the crime scene belonged to Molly Katanga. When the prosecution attempted to object, the defense firmly pointed the court to earlier records supporting their claim.
The issue of electricity going off at the time of the crime was also debated.
Karuhanga pressed Kanene to confirm his earlier statement that Patricia Katanga was not home when the power went off, making it impossible for her to have turned it off remotely. Kanene conceded. Additionally, the defense presented a message from UMEME on Patricia’s phone confirming power restoration after payment. However, the prosecution objected to admitting UMEME’s message as an exhibit.
The defense further questioned how the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) knew about the power outage between 7:30 and 8:50 AM even before the forensic report was released.
Later, when MacDusman Kabega took over, he raised concerns about the legality of the court order used to access mobile devices and CCTV footage. The judge agreed that the order was unlawful. However, the prosecution argued that since the order had not been formally challenged, the evidence collected could not be discarded.
The trial has been adjourned until Thursday, March 20, 2025, to allow the prosecution to attend to matters in the Court of Appeal. The defense, through Jet Tumwebaze, protested the adjournment, calling it unfair to their client, Molly Katanga who remains in jail without bail
