Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) has confirmed the arrest of Miss Rwanda 2017 Elsa Iradukunda for allegedly interfering with ongoing investigations on sexual assaults and sexual harassment that Miss Rwanda pageant organiser Dieudonné Ishimwe is being charged with. 

Iradukunda and Prince Kid were reportedly dating and The New Times understands that the beauty queen has been lobbying former Miss Rwanda contestants to dismiss, through writing, reports that the accused has in anyway sexually offended any of them while or after participating in the beauty contest on different occasions.

The beauty queen is currently detained at Remera RIB station after she was arrested on suspicion of using forged documents in an attempt to hamper the ongoing investigations in efforts to find facts intended to set Prince Kid free and challenge RIB’s accusations that Ishimwe committed rape among other offences as per witnesses provided by some former contestants.

Ishimwe, a former artiste best known as Prince Kid, was arrested last week, with RIB handing over his case file to the National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) on Wednesday, May 4.

Iradukunda’s mother in dilemma

On Sunday, before her arrest, Iradukunda told her mother that RIB summoned her but did not reveal more details.  She had just returned home from church.

The mother, identified as Christine Mukandekezi, went to the investigation body’s headquarters in Kimihurura at 8pm of the same day to see what happened to her daughter.

"I don’t know what made them [RIB] summon her,” said Mukandekezi although she admitted that it was not the first time her daughter was summoned by RIB for reasons she does not know.

Given the ongoing investigations on Miss Rwanda organizer Ishimwe, Mukandekezi thinks Iradukunda’s arrest is connected to the note she and other former Miss Rwanda contestants signed, confirming or dismissing reports that they were subject to sex abuse by the Miss Rwanda organizer on different occasions as earlier indicated by RIB.   

The mother said that her daughter and her counterparts opted to use the note because they did not want to speak to the media.

On her part, Iradukunda denied, in the note, that Ishimwe committed any sexual abuse against her.

The beauty was, alongside other beauty queens who signed the note, summoned by RIB for interrogation after which she was arrested while others were interrogated and went back home.

"I really don’t know why she is detained. It’s so sad being here as a parent without any clue about what is going on with my daughter. I pray that fellow parents and the First Lady help me out and set my daughter free,” a crying Mukandekezi claimed.

"She is a young Rwandan who does activities intended to change lives of Rwandan communities and who gives her all for the nation. It’s a pity that she spends a night on the floor… with the same dress she was wearing when she reported [to RIB]. We really have no idea what’s going on,” she added.

 Not much has been revealed regarding Iradukunda’s case, however article 267 of the penal indicates that any person who, with fraudulent intention, produces a false written document, causes to write false statements or produces a conflicting declaration, is considered to commit the offense of forgery. 

Upon conviction, he/she is liable to imprisonment for a term of not less than five (5) years, but not more than seven (7) years and a fine of not less than three million Rwandan francs (Rwf3,000,000) and not more than five million Rwandan francs (Rwf5,000,000) or only one of these penalties.

Meanwhile, The Ministry of Youth and Culture has temporarily suspended the beauty pageant until investigations are completed.

Prince Kid’s company, Rwanda Inspiration Backup, was contracted to organise Miss Rwanda since 2014.