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AIP Driciru Christine, the Officer In charge CFPU Arua. Photo by Godwin Abedican. By Godwin Abedican Arua The officer in charge of the Child and Family Protection Unit (CFPU) at the police headquarters in West Nile is warning the public against interfering wit
AIP Driciru Christine, the Officer In charge CFPU Arua. Photo by Godwin Abedican.
By Godwin Abedican
Arua
The officer in charge of the Child and Family Protection Unit (CFPU) at the police headquarters in West Nile is warning the public against interfering with police cases that are under investigation.
These concerns come as a result of community members presenting interests in withdrawing cases related to Gender Based Violence (GBV) from police to be solved at family level, which is said to greatly interfere with processes of investigations.
AIP Driciru Christine, the Officer Incharge CFPU notes that this has ended with the police being blamed even in cases like defilement.
“We do receive, cases of police being accused of negotiating defilement cases. Police can be blamed yes, because they are now the ones handling the issues. But, when you look at the other side, you find that, as police when you are handling the case of a complainant, reaching when you want to hand the accused to court, the complainants come up to say they have resolved to sit down at family level to handle the same case” AIP Driciru said.
She adds that, what the police can do is only to give guidance on ensuring that there is a successful negotiation at family level.
According to her, when the people who advocate for their cases to be handled outside the police fail to settle their matters, they begin finger-painting at the police for failing to work and yet when their cases are out of police, the laws deal with them differently.
“When they request by themselves to go and handle their matters from home, you find that, after two weeks or a month, they are coming back to the police because the negotiation they had failed. When you ask them what happened, they will show you a very long list of items they negotiated and some things have been paid while others haven’t been paid and now, they want the police to recover what has not been cleared. You find that this case now becomes civil and no longer criminal because part of the payment is already done.”
“My advice is that instead of pointing fingers at each other, if a case has already been reported to police, let the law take its course rather than stopping the police on the way when they are still continuing with their investigation,” Driciru appealed.
Where a person is convicted of defilement or aggravated defilement under Section 129, the court may, in addition to any sentence imposed on the offender, order that the victim of the offence be paid compensation by the offender for any physical, sexual and psychological harm caused to the victim by the offence.