Kampala — RELATIVES of five people buried at the Serulanda cemetery in Rakai district have appealed to the Government to assist them exhume the bodies and accord them a decent burial.

Appearing before the Sewakambo commission at Buganda Road in Kampala on Wednesday, Siraje Kimera Tibandeke, one of the petitioners, said he lost his father Saadi Tibandeke, mother Rehemah Wanyana, brother Budallah Katerega and two sisters, Hadija Tibandeke and Jalia Nabandeka, who were members of the sect.

Kimera, 45, a businessman based in Mukono and his sister Madinah Nabatwa separately appeared before the commission chaired by Prof. Nelson Sewankambo.

Kimera said they had tried to access the bodies of their relatives in vain.

The commission heard that the bodies had either been preserved at the sect headquarters or were buried at night.

The relatives mysteriously died at different times and a postmortem was not carried out, the petitioners said.

Kimera said other distant relatives, who also joined the sect, had died there and wondered why the Government had not intervened to stop the sect's activities.

Nabatwa said she was then forced to sing a love song to a man the sect leaders forced her to marry in a mass wedding at the sect headquarters that was attended by residents.