The Late JB Danquah
Dr Lawrence Edusei, a pathologist at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, has told an Accra Central District Court that he cannot find the report of an autopsy he performed on the slain New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament (MP) for Abuakwa North in the Eastern Region, JB Danquah-Adu.
According to him, his home was burgled in September last year and a sizable number of autopsy reports were stolen.
He did not say who burgled and ransacked his home but said he had reported the matter to the Korle-Bu Police.
The pathologist said he could, however, not say with certainty whether the late JB Danquah’s post-mortem report was among those stolen.
Dr Lawrence Edusei, who is currently on retirement, said due to the burglary, he had lost about one thousand reports.
“Writing the report would demand additional work to be done. I need to get access to the pictures, take my time and recollect what I saw and put same into writing,” he said.
He has over the past months been playing hide-and-seek with the court, which had ordered him to release the report to the police or come and explain reasons behind the delay in its release.
Although two separate summonses were served on him to appear before the court, he failed to comply.
The magistrate, Arit Nsemoh, whose patience had been running out, subsequently ordered the court’s registry to serve a witness subpoena on the pathologist to appear before the court on January 4, 2018.
Dr. Edusei told the court that he had performed thousands of post-mortems and could not say with certainty when he did that of the late MP’s.
Asked by the magistrate why he did not furnish the court with the report when he concluded the post-mortem, he said the Judicial Service had not paid him for services rendered for the past 15 years and had thus decided to hoard the reports until he was paid.
The magistrate, however, restrained him from saying anything further on the debt owed him and urged him to limit his responses to the JB Danquah case.
Dr Edusei told the court that he could not single out the JB case, stating, “In medicine, you cannot give specific answers to specific questions,” a claim the magistrate did not take lightly.
Magistrate Nsemoh then inquired from the pathologist what assistance he would need before releasing the report.
He (pathologist) said writing the report would need additional work to be done.
The presiding magistrate therefore adjourned the matter to January 18, 2018 for the pathologist to release the report to the court’s registrar or appear in court to explain why the report was not ready.
Two suspects, Daniel Asiedu, 19, aka Sexy Don Don – phone dealer and Vincent Bosso aka Junior Agogo, phone repairer – are before the court for allegedly murdering JB Danquah-Adu.
The case is still at committal stage awaiting the Attorney General’s (AG’s) advice and the autopsy report, which will play a huge role in determining the fate of the two suspects.
By Gibril Abdul Razak