Police have cordoned off the Supreme Court building in the Kampala upscale suburb of Kololo to investigate the fire that gutted the Chief Justice’s chambers on Wednesday morning.
The fire broke out in the Chief Justice’s chambers on the third floor destroying several documents. Officers from the Fire and Rescue Services department backed by fire trucks managed to contain the fire and stop it from spreading to other parts of the highest court in the country.
Shortly after containing the fire, a team of regular police officers cordoned off the Supreme Court building around midday with yellow tapes as a Crime Scene.
Mr Jamson Karemani, the Judiciary Spokesperson said the few people he has talked to believe the fire started from the Air Conditioning System.
He called for calm from the public, saying no court file was affected by the fire since all files are kept in the registry.
“But the few documents which are on the table and the like could have been affected but lucky enough most of the files are not kept in his chambers so there’s no big alarm about the effect of the fire on the files,” he said.
Sources told this reporter on condition of anonymity that some files outside the chief justice’s offices were damaged in the process of putting out the fire. Apparently, all the activities of the Supreme Court have been suspended.
Karemani said he is not sure when the supreme court business will resume. By the time of the fire outbreak, Chief Justice Alphonse Owiny-Dollo was attending a meeting in his office at the High Court Criminal Division, which doubles as the Judiciary Headquarters.
The Kampala Central Division Mayor, Salim Uhuru who was among the hundreds of people who responded to the fire incident, said it’s good the Supreme Court rented building has fire extinguishers otherwise the damage of the fire could have been huge.
There have been several fire incidents at various institutions especially schools since this year began. Police are yet to issue a conclusive report about the various incidents.
