TAKORADI Girls Family Suspect Police attempt to bury girls in secret.

Families of three of the kidnapped Takoradi girls who were declared dead by police are suspecting that the Ghana Police Service may be attempting to bury the remains of their supposedly dead relatives without their consent.

Family members claim the police administration has refused to release the remains of the girls despite continuous agitating that they needed to conduct their own independent DNA test to authenticate the police DNA test that claimed somebody remains recovered from the home of the kidnappers were indeed that of the four kidnapped girls

A sister to one of the girls, Rebecca Quayson, said apart from being refused the remains, the families have also been refused hard copies of the initial police forensic results that confirmed the deaths of the girls.

The grieving sister told Accra-based Citi News that the families cannot have closure until they independently conduct DNA tests to corroborate or dispute the police report.

“We are not happy because the IGP held a press conference telling Ghanaians that if the family wanted a second opinion, he was ready to release the bones. But it is a different story now.”

She said three families went to the Western Regional police command and requested for the remains for “a second opinion and maybe burial.”

“But they are telling us that it is evidence and they have to keep it and they have to guard it for security reasons and all that,” she recounted.

In a growing air of suspicion about the authenticity of the police DNA report, Rebecca Quayson quizzed:  “If you trust the work that you have done and you trust the report you have come to tell Ghanaians, what is stopping you for giving us the bones?”

The missing girls were declared dead by police on August 15, 2019.

The victims, Priscilla Bentum, Ruth Love Quayson, Priscilla Mantebea Kuranchie and Ruth Abakah were kidnapped in Takoradi in the Western Region about one year ago amidst a wild goose chase spearheaded by the top police hierarchy.

Since April 2019, the police administration led by the Director of the Criminal Investigations Department, Maame Tiwaa Danquah, have issued contradictory statements about the fates of the missing girls. At one point, they claimed the girls have been spirited out of the country and at another point, they claimed they have discovered the whereabouts of the girls and that they were safe. Few months after these assurances, the police claim they had discovered some skeletal remains close to the home of the suspected kidnapper Samuel Udoetuk-Wills. After several hush-hush moves, the police finally declared the girls dead, saying DNA tests conducted on the bones confirmed the girls have been dead at the time the police administration was giving family members assurances of their safety.