Shallow graves found in home of suspect who chained 28 persons

Following last weekend’s raid of the Ojodu home of a self-acclaimed prophet, Emmanuel Adeyemi, where the police rescued 28 people, including children, who were chained, detectives have also discovered shallow graves in the home of the suspect.

The suspect, who is in police net, was said to have buried many of his victims in a swamp behind the house.It was gathered that despite claims by the suspect that all those chained up were mad, the police were able to ascertain that many of them were of sound mind. One of the victims is a cancer patient, who had developed sores from being chained for a long time.

While 27 others had been taken to the Lagos State government rehabilitation centre, one was, however, taken to the hospital, as she was very weak and had terrible sores acquired as a result of long period of being in chains.

The Commissioner of Police, Lagos State Command, Fatai Owoseni, acting on a tip-off, had deployed operatives at the Area ‘G’ Police Command Headquarters, to the house located at Oyingbo Unity Estate, Olamidun Close, Yakoyo, Oke-Ira.

Although, the initial intelligence report was that a teenager, who is a stepson of the suspect, was chained for always stealing, subsequent intelligence by the police however revealed that 27 others were also locked up.

Confirming the incident to newsmen, Owoseni said they had initially invited the suspect to the station based on a tip-off, and he claimed his chained his stepson to cure him from the spirit of stealing.

“While we were still on that case, we got another credible tip-off that there were other people chained in that same house. Of course, we carried out a raid and confirmed the allegation to be true.

“His claims now that he has been arrested is that he is a herbalist, but why didn’t he tell us that when we first invited him to the station over locking up his stepson? He only told us that he wanted to cure his son of stealing.”

On the allegation of shallow graves being found in the residence, Owoseni said: “We had another tip-off that there were people he buried in that compound and he confirmed it during interrogation. Because the area is swampy, the suspect had allegedly buried some people in the swamp and about three others in the house.

“When we asked him of their identities he said it was some of his patients that were brought to his home from the hospital after they were given up for dead. They eventually died in his care and were buried in the swamp because their relatives refused to take them.

“When we also queried him on the claims that he used the body parts of the deceased to sell to ritualists, he swore that he was only a traditional healer and not a human parts seller.” Owoseni said investigation was ongoing, as the police was working assiduously to get to the root of the matter.