Lawyer for the woman who was assaulted by a police officer at a Midland Savings and Loans office in Accra, has rejected reports that his client discontinued the case because she was not interested and thus failed to appear in court to testify.
“I spoke to her this morning and she tells me she had never done anything to suggest she was not interested in the case,” the lawyer, Samson Lardy Anyenini told Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show on Tuesday.
According to him, the victim, Patience Osafo, throughout the trial period received only one invitation which she could not justifiably honour but was not invited again.
Samson Anyenini believes the discontinuation of the case was a calculated attempt by the police service to cover up their own who assaulted the victim.
“They should be telling us something else because this clearly does not wash. Clearly someone is prosecuting his colleague and they decide together that let us attend court as many times, take adjournments and let us not inform the complainant because she would not be aware and then at a point the case would be struck out for want of prosecution.”
The lawyer said Patience could not honour the first invitation to the court because she was taking care of her sick sister in Kumasi, but was required to appear in court after a short notice.
“So I informed her to relay back to the prosecutors that she would not be able to be in court because of the circumstances, and that if she was given about ten days, she could prepare and appear. I have confirmed with her this morning, and she says apart from that one invitation at the initial stage, she’s never received any invitation from the police prosecution. I asked myself, how did we get to a point for a case to be thrown out on the basis of want of prosecution?” the lawyer questioned.
He accused the police of lying to the court saying “the police deliberately did not give her [the victim] information; they took one adjournment from the other without informing her and telling the court in the process that they were informing her and that she was unavailable to attend and when that happened, the law says the court is justified to dismiss a case for want of prosecution.”
“I suspect they can do better than this. My view is that this is a clear calculated plan and they went to the court, took adjournment after adjournment, never informed the complainant, yet kept repeating to the court that she had been informed and she was disinterested.”
Samson also accused the police of proffering lenient charges on their colleague.
“There were proper charges that were supposed to have been proffered against the gentlemen, but that had not been made. The fact we know is that he was to be charged with more than a mere assault, but because it was the police doing the case against their colleague, they obviously looked the other way and did not look at the felony of causing harm with the potential of ten years of jail. They could have added the charge of exposing the child to danger as shown in the video. They didn’t do all of these,” he added.
Background
Lance Corporal Amanor assaulted Patience Osafo in July 2018 when she was trying to withdraw her savings of GHc 270.00 after office hours due to frustrations from the bank.
According to her statement, she had begged, saying she needed GHc105 urgently to settle her debts and also feed a baby she was taking care of.
The police officer got physical after Patience Osafo refused to leave the banking hall with her grandchild, because her money had not been given to her.
The police officer is seen holding onto the woman and hitting her multiple times with an umbrella, as she tried to wrestle away.
He also attempted to violently drag her out of the building as she held the baby in her arms.
The incident was captured on video and went viral on social media sparking public outrage and drawing condemnation from Amnesty International, the Ghana Bar Association, the Ministry for Gender, Children and Social Protection, and a number of civil society organizations.
Frederick Amanor was interdicted and his uniform and all other police accoutrements taken from him, pending internal disciplinary proceedings.
In addition, an investigation commenced into the conduct of officials of the Midland Savings and Loans limited.
The company suspended all the staff that were on duty at the time and agreed on a compensation package for Patience Osafo.
In the thick of affairs, the victim got a lot of financial support from several sources, with some other reports suggesting that she even got a house as a compensation package from the company.
–Citifmonline