Nursery pupil murder: suspect claims police tampered with CCTV evidence

The director of Jozan Nursery and Primary School and a suspect in the murder of six-year-old pupil Joan Faith Apio has told court that police may have tampered with her phone, which contained CCTV footage she intended to rely on in her defence.

Suzan Vivian Ariokot is among six people accused of murdering Apio, a primary one pupil at Jozan Nursery and Primary School in Soroti. The other accused are Joseph Okedi, headteacher James Edoket, school cook Valentine Opio, school matron Osula Adong and police officer John Bosco Obotol.

Ariokot’s lawyers, Francis Ajuun and Joseph Odong, told court that they had been unable to obtain CCTV footage from Pride bank and Soroti regional referral hospital, which they consider crucial to the defence case.

The lawyers have instead sought to rely on CCTV footage from Ariokot’s shop along Soroti Main Street, which they say could establish that she was at the shop and not at the school when Apio was killed on February 5, 2025.

Apio was found dead in the school’s latrine on the same day. On Monday this week, Justice Boniface Wamala directed Ariokot to identify the phone linked to the CCTV system and have it charged within the court premises so that the footage could be retrieved.

After the phone was charged, Ariokot was asked to unlock it and retrieve the recordings. However, her lawyer Ajuun told court shortly afterwards that the footage she had stored on the phone before her arrest was missing.

According to Ajuun, the missing recordings included footage Ariokot intended to use to show that she was at her shop when Apio was killed. He further told court that Ariokot had reported that other recordings she had previously submitted to the office of the East Region police commander were also missing.

Phone seized by police

Ariokot told court that on February 11, 2025, she was summoned to the East Kyoga Regional Police headquarters over allegations that she had killed Apio. She said she went to police with three phones to demonstrate her innocence and played the CCTV footage for officers before the devices were seized.

Ariokot accused the scene-of-crime officer, whom she said was the first police officer to handle the phones, of improperly taking possession of them and accessing the footage.

“When I was detained and taken to Serere CPS, I left the police still watching that footage that was in my phone,” Ariokot told court.

She explained that her shop had a CCTV camera covering the premises and that the system was connected to her phone through Airtel mobile data.

“There was a setting on my phone for every footage to save directly. The footage was saving automatically to the phone and capturing everything in the shop,” she said.

Ariokot also told court that she used the phone to store other files, including her wedding videos, but was unsure how long CCTV recordings could remain on the device before being automatically deleted.

The defence has raised concerns that the missing recordings could affect Ariokot’s ability to establish her whereabouts at the time of Apio’s death.

Court orders bank to release footage

After hearing the defence’s concerns over the missing recordings, Justice Wamala ordered that Pride bank headquarters in Kampala be served with a notice requiring the bank to provide CCTV footage from February 5, 2025.

The judge directed Ariokot’s lawyers to travel to Kampala and serve the bank with the order so that the footage can be obtained and presented as part of the defence evidence.

The case was adjourned to Wednesday, August 12, 2026, for continuation of the defence hearing, with the court indicating that this would be the final adjournment for the hearing.

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