Police Fail To Handover Skeletal Remains Of Takoradi Kidnap Victims To Families

Expectations by the families of the four kidnapped and allegedly murdered Takoradi girls, that they will today receive skeletal remains said to be for the girls for private DNA testing, were disappointed by the Ghana Police Service.

After the Western regional Police Command encouraged the family to send emissaries to the Inspector General of Police in Accra, so that the Police Chief would personally hand over results from a DNA test that the Police had run, along with the skeletal remains to them, the families were told that the Police could not fulfill that promise.

Allegedly, the Police would breach standard operating procedures if they were to hand over the remains to the families without a court order.

The explanation is that the skeletal remains are still artifacts of evidence in the custody of the Police and that handing them over to the families would make room for the evidence to be tampered with.

It is not clear if the Police would have given that same excuse if the families had agreed with the Police’ conclusion that indeed the remains are that of the girls and requested for the remains for burial.

The families of Priscilla Blessing Bentum, 21, Priscilla Mantebea Koranchie, 18 Ruth Love Quayson, 18 and Ruth Abaka, do not trust the Police’ claim that the girls who were kidnapped between 2018 and 2019 are dead.

They suspect that the embarrassing case is a toll on the Akufo-Addo government, that the government wants to shirk off before the 2020 election, and therefore has staged processes to give the impression that the girls have been murdered.

Consequently, the families have said they do not believe DNA results from a test that the Police conducted to confirm that the remains, recovered from a septic tank at Kasaworodo, are those of the girls.

The families say they want to verify the Police’ claim by private DNA tests that they themselves can supervise, and would only mourn and burry the skeletal remains if their version of the DNA tests come out positive.

The Police Administration had agreed to the families’ request after attempts to persuade them into accepting the DNA tests had failed. The Western regional police had then explained to them that they could only get the remains from the IGP himself in Accra. A trip had therefore been organized for the families to travel to meet the IGP in Accra today.

However, the IGP is said to have announced to them in a meeting in his office this afternoon that they could not be handed the skeletal remains because they are still objects of evidence in the case. The families, which had sent down a delegation of 18, can only get the skeletal remains along with the Police’ DNA test results if a court orders it.

Michael Grant Hayford, spokesperson for the families has said he is disappointed, that the Police would send them all the way from Takoradi to Accra to announce that they cannot give them the remains.

According to him, the Police could have just told them while they were in Takoradi rather than organizing transportation for them to just come and waste their time in Accra.