Man to ease On self in public – on orders of callous police

 

By: Michael Boateng, Techiman

Despite the efforts being made by the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Paul Tawiah Quaye, to reform the Police Service by ensuring that the fundamental human rights of suspects are respected, some of the personnel working under him are also doing everything possible to thwart his efforts.

Hardly a day passes without one reading about the alleged brutalities of the police, especially, on suspects in their custody. Journalists, who have always been their saviour when they are in trouble, have also not been spared this ordeal.

On Tuesday, this week, a reporter from the Daily Graphic in Ho was severely assaulted by the police for capturing the manner they were beating people in the name of operations on camera.

The latest to fall victim to this inhuman treatment is a 43-year old farmer, Kwabena Owusu, from Tanoso in the Techiman Municipality, who was compelled to ease on himself in public, after being stripped half naked and chained to an electric pole.

Kwabena Owusu told The Chronicle that he was arrested by the Tanoso Police on Saturday, June 9, 2012, after a quarrel ensued between him and the ex-wife, Akua Bemah. He narrated that he and Akua Bemah were divorced, but he lived with the daughter in the same house at Tanoso, near Techiman.

According to him, on that fateful Saturday, he wanted his daughter to cook for him, but the girl was nowhere to be found.

Upon enquiries about the whereabouts of his daughter, a lotto vendor nearby told him (Owusu) that the daughter was seen coming out of her mother’s house in the morning. When the daughter returned home, Owusu asked the girl to relocate to her mother’s house, if that was her wish, but his ex-wife did not take the comments kindly.

Akua Bemah subsequently went to the ex-husband’s house with her sister and rained insults on him. According to the 43-year old farmer, he ran after his former wife, but unfortunately, she fell, after which he returned to the house.

Shortly after arriving at his house, the ex-wife and some police personnel came to arrest him, and on their way to the Tanoso police station, Owusu informed the policemen that he was thirsty and wanted to drink water.

The police, according to him, refused to grant his request, with the reason that he (Owusu) wanted to escape. The suspect also insisted that until they gave him the water, he would not stay in the cell. Owusu’s agitation at the cells compelled the police to brutalise him, before a taxi cab was arranged to transfer him to the Techiman police station, still half naked.

At Techiman, he was chained to a pole and forced to stay in the hot sun. The suspect, again, requested that the police allow him attend to nature’s call, but the law enforcers, surprisingly, asked him to ease on himself. After failing to control himself, he was forced to defecate on himself.

According to the suspect, after defecating in public, the police  sent a man to buy water to be used to wash the feaces from Owusu’s body for a fee of GH¢20, which was paid by relatives of Owusu who had arrived at the scene to seek bail for him.

Owusu said his relatives were able to acquire bail for him on Monday morning, after the police had extorted GH¢200 from him. When contacted on phone on Monday June 11, 2012, the Techiman Municipal Police Commander, Superintendent Joseph Antwi Gyau, claimed he was on his way to Kintampo and would call back when he returned.

Unfortunately, the Municipal Police Command did not call until this reporter called again on his mobile phone, where he denied Owusu’s story. He challenged The Chronicle to investigate from the Techiman police station whether the allegations were true.

The Chronicle accepted the Municipal Commander’s challenge and went to Techiman to further investigate the story, where it came to light that Kwabena Owusu was handcuffed to a pole and made to defecate in public. Some of the junior police officers, who spoke to The Chronicle on condition of anonymity, said the suspect was chained to the pole because of his aggressive behaviour.

According to the junior police officers, the man was behaving like a ‘lunatic,’ and that they did not want to lock him up with the sober minded suspects in the cells. They emphasised that Kwabena Owusu initially resisted arrest and was rowdy, asking “how can a sane man at his age defecate in public, if even you are dared to do so?”

The police, however, denied collecting any GH¢200 before granting him bail, although the collection of the GH¢20 from the person who washed the faeces from Owusu’s body was confirmed.

 

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