Lawyer of Shadrach Arloo, who died at the West Hills Mall following an altercation with the police, is calling for the immediate resignation of the Inspector General of Police (IGP).
Speaking on Ghana Tonight on Wednesday, February 8 in reaction to a statement issued by the Ghana Police Service earlier, Mr Sosu said the police rushed in releasing that statement because what they put out there was not the full report of the post-mortem examination.
“It must be placed on record that when it comes to homicide, be it first-degree murder or second-degree murder or in our case manslaughter or either intentional killing or negligent killing, there are several intervening factors because assuming that what police said is true and that he was choked on a foreign substance, it means that while this substance was in the throat of this young man, police managed to apprehend him.
“When you apprehend someone who has swallowed a substance, which you say is foreign, what will be the appropriate thing to do as police?” he asked, replying later that he could have been taken to the nearest health facility to get the substance removed and used as exhibit.
“But police handcuffs the guy, leaves him on the floor, and get others to either beat him or tase him on the floor until he died on the floor and so in recounting events leading to the death of this person, police conveniently blight all these things and simply say it’s because he got choked of foreign substance.
In their statement, the police said the post-mortem examination done in the presence of stakeholders including the deceased’s lawyer proved that he had been choked on a foreign substance which later tested positive for narcotics.
“The narrative of events, as gathered by the police, indicated that during the course of the arrest, the deceased pulled out a substance from his bag, which he quickly swallowed before anyone could stop him.
“He became unconscious shortly afterwards and was taken to the Sonotech Clinic for medical attention but was pronounced dead on arrival.”
“We are demanding a number of things that within the next seven days, the police should open up this investigation and make sure that anybody who is complicit is brought to book.
“Otherwise, we call for the immediate resignation of the IGP. If he fails to resign we are going to petition the President to remove him from office because you cannot be the head of police and see your officers misbehave this way and yet you want to use your own system to cover up for them.”