Barely two weeks after the Inspector- General of Police, Solomon Arase, warned officers and men of the police force against unprovoked assault on innocent civilians, a 37-year-old woman identified as Mrs. Bamidele Risikat, has lost her pregnancy after a Divisional Police Officer, DPO in charge of Kemta Idi-Aba Police Headquarters in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, allegedly brutalised her.
According to reports, the DPO, identified as CSP Samuel, was said to have assaulted the woman for “daring to make a phone call” in his presence.
On her hospital bed at the State Hospital, Ijaiye, Abeokuta, the victim, a non-teaching staff member of Catholic Comprehensive High School at Onikolobo, Abeokuta, told newsmen she lost her nine-week-old pregnancy owing to the torture received from the DPO.
She disclosed that she was at the police station in respect of a matter involving her husband, Tunde Bamidele, saying she wanted to put a call across to her brother- in-law when the DPO descended on her with repeated slaps.
“My husband was detained at the police station for daring to request for some money owed him by a building contractor,” she noted.
Squirming in pain, she said the DPO later ordered her detention.
According to her, “when I got to the police station, my husband gave me his phone that I should call his brother. When I was calling, I just saw one man; I never knew he was the DPO.
“He said ‘you are very stupid, you are phoning after 8pm. You don’t know we don’t phone here after 8pm?’
“I apologised that I wasn’t aware I shouldn’t call even when other officers were there and they didn’t stop me. He forcibly took my phone and called a police officer to arrest me. They harassed me, pushed me and my husband had to rush out shouting ‘she is pregnant, don’t push her.’
“That was when the man started slapping and shouting at me.”
Speaking further, Risikat added that she suffered serious stomach pain all through the night following the assault, noting that police officers on duty could not come to her aid but her husband gave her some money to buy sanitary pad to stop the blood flow from her private part.
“The following day, I was rushed to the hospital where doctors confirmed that my nine weeks’ old pregnancy had been aborted.
According to her husband, the contractor, simply identified as Bolaji, owed him and other colleagues N894, 000 for the past 19 months.
Bamidele said, “Bolaji and I were taken to the station where we were both detained initially. Before we were detained, the DPO said we should write statements but I said I wasn’t ready to write any statement.
“When it was 7pm, my wife called me because I am a diabetic and an ulcer patient and she had to come to the station. When she came, I gave her my phone to call my brother and what I heard from inside was ‘bastard, go inside’, and she was detained.
“My clothes were removed, and they poured water on me and gave an instruction that I should be smoked with tear gas.”
Bamidele, nonetheless, accused the DPO of collecting N20, 000 before releasing him and his wife on bail.
The state Police Public Relations Officer, PPRO, Olumuyiwa Adejobi, when contacted on Tuesday, said the matter was yet to reach the attention of the state Commissioner of Police, Abdulmajid Ali.
Adejobi however, stressed that the command would not condone any act of brutality against innocent civilians, adding that the affected couple should write a letter of complaint to the police commissioner.
The PPRO promised that they would get justice.
Comentários