Police in Kisoro District are hunting for a teacher in connection with the death of an 11-year-old pupil.
According to police, the teacher, who works at Mutolere Primary School, hit Dan Gasore from Rubankono Village on the head and back with a stick from which he sustained injuries that led to his death.
“The boy suffered injuries and when he returned home, his situation worsened. He died two days after.
He lost too much blood oozing from the nose and other body parts due to the aggressive punishment by the teacher,” Police spokesperson Fred Enanga told journalists in Kampala yesterday.
Mr Enanga said the teacher beat up the pupil for failing classwork. “The teacher was saying that the boy had failed to comprehend what he was teaching and because of that, he had to use a stick as a form of punishment, so you can see that it resulted in an incident of murder. He is on the run but we are going to try as much as possible to cause his arrest. He will be charged,” he said.
Corporal punishment as a sentence for crime was outlawed by the Supreme Court in 1999 and is prohibited in article 94 of the Children Act.
However, according to the 2018 National Survey on Violence against Children, 75 percent of children report being beaten in class.
In July last year, Mukono Chief Magistrate’s Court convicted and fined school heads of Our Lady of Africa Namilyango SSS Shs 2.1 million for caning of a Senior One student. The incident occurred on July 19, 2019.
In a related development, police in Gulu City are hunting for a chapati seller who allegedly stabbed to death a customer for failing to pay Shs1,000 for eggs rolled in a chapati, commonly known as Rolex.
The incident, according to police, occurred in Gulu East Division. “The operator of the chapatti stall had a knife and he repeatedly stabbed the victim,” Mr Enanga said yesterday. Police said the suspect is on the run.
