KAMPALA- The hearing of the Katanga murder case is ongoing before the High Court, with defense lawyers still cross-examining a KCCA City mortuary pathologist, Dr. Richard Ambayo.
The lawyers, led by Elison Karuhanga, insist that the gunshot entry wound which killed Katanga was on the right side of the head and not on the left side as stated in Dr. Ambayo’s postmortem report.
According to the lawyers, Dr. Ambayo is either incompetent in his pathological work or his judgment was already biased by Investigating Officer Detective Sgt. Beteise David, leading him to conclude that Katanga had been shot on the left side to rule out suicide after a domestic violence as stated in the police form requesting for a postmortem.
The defense team further confronted Dr. Ambayo with a photo of the late Katanga’s body showing lacerations on the wound on the right side of the head; however, Dr. Ambayo maintains that sometimes exit wounds also have lacerations explaining why the exit wound on the left head of Katanga had them.
Also asked which direction the fatal bullet took in the body of the late Katanga, the pathologist denied knowing the whereabouts of the ammunition he never recovered from the body or being in position to tell which type of gun it was discharged from.
The defense lawyers also accuse Dr. Ambayo of leaking his report to an online blog and to two UPDF soldiers, who relied on it to prompt an inquest into Katanga’s death; hence the arrest and subsequent charging of his immediate family members with his murder.
However, Dr. Ambayo denies sharing the report before it was tendered in court as an exhibit.
The Lawyers too have established that Dr. Ambayo lied in his report that the body of the late Katanga was identified at the mortuary by his daughter Martha Nkwanzi when the pathologist admitted that he doesn’t know what Martha Nkwanzi looks like.
