-As Police Credibility Gets Slaps From Questionable Dna Test
A renowned Criminologist, a pathologist, lawyers, critics and family members of the four Takoradi Kidnapping victims have punched holes in the authenticity of the alleged DNA test by the Ghana Police Service claims the girls have been killed.
Ace Criminologist, Professor Kenneth Agyeman Attafuah, in interviews monitored by Whatsup News on Tuesday September 17, 2019, questioned the conclusions drawn by the police forensic investigators, saying they must convince the family of the victims and the general public beyond reasonable doubt by giving the alleged remains of the victims to independent bodies for counter-testing.
“The police must be willing to have a second look at their work, the bones are still there, and it can be made available to an independent body to look at,” Professor Attafuah said.
Similarly, renowned pathologists and the former Director-General of the Ghana Health Services, Professor Agyeman Badu Akosa has expressed doubts about the authenticity of the results.
“I believe sincerely that this forensic evidence should be subjected to a more experienced opinion. I do not know the forensic scientist who performed this test but I believe that there are so many disjointed things in this discussion that I want a second opinion on this report. That is the only thing that will tie the ends of the case.”
At different times between July 2018 and December 2018, four young ladies were abducted by alleged ransom kidnappers in the oil city of Takoradi. The whereabouts of the victims: Ruth Abakah, Priscilla Kuranchie, Ruth Love Quayson and Priscilla Blessing Bentum has since become a subject of deep mystery as the police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) boss DCOP Tiwaa Danquah and other security chiefs in the country have given wildly contradictory reports of the status of the victims.
In April, this year, DCOP Tiwaa Danquah held a widely publicised press conference stating categorically that the police new the whereabouts of the victims and that they were safe. Prior to that, the Daily Guide Newspaper had reported that police sources have told them that the girls have been rescued and were receiving treatment at the 37 Military Hospital.
Additionally, family members of the victims claim that mid-2019, the DCOP Tiwaa Danquah has assured them that the girls were alive and that the kidnappers were demanding huge ransoms which the police was arranging.
It therefore came as a shock when around July 2019, the police department announced publicly that they have found skeletal remains close to the residence of the alleged kidnappers. After more than two months of reported DNA testing, the Inspector-General of Police James Oppong Boanuh, on Monday, September 16, announced that the DNA reports has proven a positive match with the girls.
Whatsup News has gathered that one of the kidnapped girls is adopted, and therefore DNA samples received from her adopted parents could not have possibly given a positive match.
Also, search from medical resources show that dead bodies take at least one year to become skeletons. Therefore, if the last girl was kidnapped late 2018, she could not have decomposed the same way as the others by July 2019 when their remains were discovered.
“Clearly, these girls were abducted on different dates and as far as I am concerned even if it was the same team doing the work, it tells us there is virtually no proper police investigation in this country,” Professor Akosa punched holes in the police narration.
“I find it a little disconcerting especially that people could be abducted from different sites and at one point all the evidence point to the fact that they were in Nigeria and at another, they were all brought to one place,” he added.
To further add to the doubt on the discovered bones, residents and family members of the victims in Takoradi claim the location of the discovery was formerly a cemetery.
A pressure group called the Economic Freedom League has on Tuesday issued a statement questioning the validity of the police DNA test. The group questioned: “How is it possible that four bodies decomposed without any resident reporting any stench? And is it possible for a dead body to quickly turn into bones within one year of death?