By Andrew Irumba
City businessman Rajni Tailor is in hot soup after being arrested by Police for allegedly issuing out bounced cheques, an act that is tantamount to fraud.
Spy Uganda’s reporter has established that Rajni was arrested over the weekend in Wobulenzi, Luwero district, after police received several cases against him of issuing cheques worth millions of shillings to people which however were rejected by his bankers.
The businessman was minister in the Mengo establishment before former president Idi Amin expelled him and other Asians from Uganda.
He fled to exile with other Asians although he returned several years later and reclaimed some of his family’s properties.
It is however said that he has since become so broke that he can barely sustain himself, something that has compelled him to start playing monkey tricks for survival, like issuing bad cheques.
It is said that he also owes a lot of money to the Indian Association of Uganda which he has since failed or refused to pay.
Who is Rajni?
He was born in Old Kampala in July 1951, opposite the Ramgharia Sikh society.
His father was a 19-year-old teenager when he came to Uganda in 1938. He settled in Lira as a tailor. Unfortunately, business was not good and he had to keep moving looking for better opportunities until he moved to Wobulenzi, Luwero District.
The locals referred to him as Gowa. He established himself as a good tailor who even stitched clothes for the late Sir Edward Mutesa and Dr Milton Obote. It was through Obote that his father met several Europeans and Asians in Uganda.
He lived in Wobulenzi from 1951 till 1966, when he relocated to Kampala, where he got a job at Cashco Supermarket.
Rajni later moved to Nakasero Distributors where present day Capital Shoppers (Down town) is located. They were the leading distributors of both soda and beers selling 2000 and 4000 crates respectively daily.
In 1970, he left Nakasero Distributors and joined the Popat Brothers on South Street now Ben Kiwanuka Street, dealing in rice, with the intent of starting his own business in two years’ time.
He wanted to deal in bagasse (kalodo) a popular raw material for making crude waragi.
Unfortunately, it never came to pass because before he could open the shop in Nabugabo then known as the ‘thief’s bazaar’, Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda.
Later when he returned to Uganda in the late 1970s Rajni started dealing in tiles, before he joined real estate dealership and then went into petroleum.
After the petroleum business not working out for him he resorted to agriculture by doing farming on his huge piece of land in Wobulenzi, although this too seemed not to reap much for him, so he has since resorted to hustling for survival.
