#EndSARS panel insists police produce evidence from National Assembly’s committee proceedings

The Independent Investigative Panel on allegations of human rights violations by the defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) and other units of the Nigeria Police Force, yesterday, said the police must tender certified true copies of proceedings from the House Committee on Public Petition.

The chairman, Justice Suleiman Galadima (rtd), while receiving other documents tendered by the police in the case of alleged extra-judicial killing of one Kennedy Yusuf, said this would enable the panel to arrive at an informed and just decision.

Galadima, who led the 11-man panel, noted that police respondent, James Idachaba, at the last hearing, had asked the panel to dismiss the case because the same was done at the National Assembly’s committee.

Idachaba informed the panel that the matter had already been settled through a post-mortem carried out by an independent pathologist at the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, which indicated Yusuf died of natural causes and was not killed by the police, as alleged by the family of the deceased.

It will be recalled that the petitioner, Mamman Danladi, pleaded with the panel that the police be ordered to compensate the family for the alleged extra-judicial killing.

The matter was adjourned to November 29, 2021, for the continuation of the hearing.

The panel also heard a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Cornelius Agbo, narrate his escape from six men who allegedly assaulted him while he defecated in a nearby bush at Durumi, Abuja, in 2013.

Agbo disclosed this in respect of a petition filed by one Tony Duchi and seven other complainants from Southern Kaduna, Kaduna State, alleging the police unlawfully tortured, detained and imprisoned them based on their ethnicity, and in a follow up to the alleged assault on Agbo.

The matter was adjourned to November 30.