Police and NACOB raise red flags in missing cocaine saga
The Ghana Police Service has turned the heat on the chief justice as they begin investigations into how more than thousand grams of cocaine presented to the court as evidence against a woman being tried for alleged drug peddling turned into baking soda.
The Police say they have no hand in the transformation of the substance since the court received the cocaine in its original state after the Food and Drugs Board testing.
A full scale investigation is, therefore, underway to unravel the mystery behind the secretive transformation of more than a thousand grams of cocaine presented to the court as evidence against a woman being tried for possessing the illegal substance in 2008.
The court had acquitted the suspect, Nana Ama Martins on grounds that the substance which had been tested as cocaine in a police forensic laboratory in 2008 turned out to be baking soda upon re-testing by the Food and Drugs Board last year.
The court in acquitting the suspect on Tuesday indicted the police and ordered the IGP to institute a probe into the clandestine disappearance of the substance. But in a sharp twist of events the policehave raised suspicion about the role of the court in the transformation of the substance and have also asked the Chief Justice to institute a probe at the judiciary.
According to the Director General of the Police Criminal Investigative Department (CID), DCOP Prosper Kwame Agblor, the seals were broken at the time the time the court took custody of the exhibit, and no attempt was made to reseal the exhibit at the court.
“It was duly handed over to the court. It is also important to note that the representatives of the suspects were pressurizing the police for bail to be executed. However, as soon as the exhibit was handed over to the court, they lost interest.”
The police administration is petitioning the chief justice to also institute an enquiry at her level into the matter. Meanwhile the police administration has also commenced an investigation into the issue.
The Narcotics Control Board which also has a stake in the matter is raising serious questions about this development and thinks the court must come clean.
“Where is the rest of that cocaine or where is the rest of the baking powder? Because it is not the court that destroys. Infact when we are destroying we invite them. We want to know where the rest of that substance is. Has it been resealed? Why is it that the court used a certain measure to judge? They are supposed to be repositories of justice and yet they could not follow the correct procedure,” Executive Secretary of NACOB, Akrasi Sarpong asked at a press briefing in Accra.
There have been sordid stories of missing narcotics in police custody in Ghana. In 2007, 77 parcels of cocaine arrested on the vessel MV Benjamin got missing from the police CID exhibit room even though the room had a 24 hour CCTV monitoring and armed guard. Meanwhile government has ordered the BNI to probe the latest transformation of cocaine exhibit into sodium bicarbonate.
Aisha Ibrahim, etv news.
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