Abia panel adjourned to March 31 for verdict in police, lawyer case

Chairman of Abia State Judicial Panel on Police brutalities, extra-Judicial killings and allied matters, Mr Justice Sunday Imo, a retired Chief Judge of the state, adjourned to March 31, 2021 for presentation of written addresses by parties in the petition filed by an Aba-based legal practitioner, Mr Maduka Bishop against the Police.

The lawyer had while testifying before the Panel alleged how some police men of former SARS/Rapid Response Squad/ Dragon Unit on March 27, 2017 stormed his house at Aba, around 4 am without warrant, brutalized him, exposed him fully naked publicly and thereafter, took and detained him at their station.

He lamented that his ordeal in the hands of the Police was a civil matter bordering on a piece of land he purchased from one late Mr Chinyere Nwamou on which his son Chimaobi Nwamou allegedly filed a petition against him to the Police.

He consequently urged the Panel to grant him N50 million to compensate his losses and cover costs of seeking medical remedies for the Police brutalities in many hospitals he listed, adding that due to the Police brutality, he now walks with aid of sticks and has been prescribed for surgery estimated to cost over N3 million.

Narrating his ordeal, he told the Panel that after being dragged out of his flat and furiously brutalised to the extent that blood was gushing out from his mouth, shoulder and legs, his flat was rapaciously searched without a warrant.

Testifying further, he told the panel that the Police thereafter drove him to their office at Umuoba Road Police Station, Ogbor-Hill, Aba, and detained him in a pit cell for several hours, adding that under handcuff, the Police took him to Zone 9 Police Headquarters, at Umuahia.

“At Police Zone 9, the officer-in-charge of the ‘Z 11B Section’ decried the inhuman treatment meted out to me. It was here at the Station that I was shown the petition written against me by one Mr Chimaobi Nwamou,” he said.

According to him, being a civil matter, he was granted bail but wondered why the Police treated him the way they did on a civil matter.

However, during cross examination, the Police Counsel DSP F.C Okafor deposed that the petitioner was at the panel to ‘ambush’ justice and informed the Panel that he petitioner had the secured a relief of N50 million on this matter from the High Court of Justice.