Following a month of fighting for where he should be buried, renowned lawyer Robert Aldride Kasango was yesterday (Sunday) finally laid to rest in Fort Portal.
This was after the Family Court in Kampala ruled that the deceased be buried in Fort Portal District and not Tororo District citing that he didn’t have any attachments to the Tororo relatives.
Kasango succumbed to heart complications on February 27 at Luzira prison, where he was serving a 16-year jail sentence. After his funeral service on March 2, mourners from Tororo snatched the coffin containing the body of Kasango, put it on a truck and fled towards Tororo but were later stopped by police.
The late lawyer’s wife Nice Kasango Bitarabeho and children petitioned family court seeking powers to have Kasango buried in Gweri Village, Fort Portal City contrary to Kasango’s mother’s wishes to have him laid to rest at his ancestral home.
At the court hearing that occurred last week, Kasango’s wife told court that the couple acquired land in Fort Portal and it was her husband’s wish to be buried there.
According to the court’s findings Kasango’s father was a Musoga by tribe; a one Richard Livingstone Kasimo who migrated to Bulemezi in Buganda where he was buried and not a Japadhola, the late Bonventure Okumu as earlier claimed.
In her defense, Ms Rosie Kabise, Kasango’s mother, said he was born in Busoga to a Musoga but was raised by his step father Okello Bonneventure of Tororo.
According to the judge, the respondent (Kasango’s mother) should have done a better job to impress the Japadhola culture on her son through the years of his life.
“Based on all the above, I am satisfied and hereby direct that the deceased shall be buried on his family land in Gweri Village, Burahya county, Fort Portal City in Kabarole District. The respondent and anyone claiming any rights through her are restrained from interfering with the said burial,” she said before adding that the burial shall be within four days from the date of this ruling.
Shortly after the court ruling, the Tororo relatives said they were dissatisfied with the judge’s decision and vowed not to attend Kasango’s burial in Fort Portal on grounds that it was against their wish.
They also vowed that Kasango’s widow would take their son’s remains to Tororo even if it took her 100 years or more, for what they claimed proper and descent burial.