T’di kidnapped girls: Demand release of human remains in court – Lawyer to families

A private legal practitioner, Martin Kpebu believes the Police Service’s refusal to release the remains to the families of the four kidnapped Takoradi girls is for a just cause.

According to him, the police cannot release the bodies because the case is still pending in court and would have to be given a court order before they can do so.

The families of the girls met with the Inspector General of Police, James Oppong Boanuh, on Thursday where they made some demands including the release of the remains for an independent DNA test.

But the police said some conditions would have to be met before the remains could be released.

The families however rejected the conditions.

According to him, the  families should rather apply to the court for the bodies to be released so due process will be done to have their request granted.

“On the facts of this case I would side with the Ghana Police because of the controversy. Are they [the families] not saying that these bones are not the bones of their children? So because of that, there is a controversy.”

“So the first hurdle they have to cross is that they’ll go to the same court and ask for an order to be permitted to do their own independent DNA test. Then after the results, they’ll know that these are the bones of their children or not. If it turns out that those bones belong to their children, then they’ll now apply that they want to have closure,” he urged.

Seeking assistance from diplomatic corps

The spokesperson for the families of the four missing Takoradi girls, Michael Grant Hayford has stated that they intend to seek the assistance of members of the diplomatic corps to help them find their children.

“The police administration is not the final say. We have diplomats in this country which we need to send letters and invite them to come to our aid so we can have justice,” he said.

This comes on the back of the meeting they had with the IGP where the bones of their deceased relatives were shown to them at the Police lab.

The families were not convinced that the human remains showed them by the Police were those of the missing girls.

Demand for remains

The families have on several occasions complained that attempts to reach the police to make available the remains of their relatives for “a second opinion and maybe burial” have been unsuccessful.