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Group accuses police
of shielding rapist officers
By Chukwudi Achife
Bureau
Chief, Enugu.
Centre for the Victims of
Extra-Judicial Killings and Torture (CVEKT AFRICA) has warned of strenuous and
subterranean efforts by some senior police officers to scuttle the ongoing
investigations in the rape case involving a deputy superintendent of police and
two other officers in Enugu, Enugu State.
The officers whose names were given
as DSP Utang James, Effiong Emmanuel and Usip Asuquo reportedly arrested two
teenage students of the state University of Science and Technology and took
them to James’ apartment at the Police Detective College, Enugu where
they raped them without protection until the early hours of the morning. James
and Emmanuel later tested positive to syphilis and HIV respectively.
Following CVEKT AFRICA’s
report of the incident, the officers were arrested and detained but the group
in a petition to the Police Performance Monitoring Unit of the Ministry of
Police Affairs, said it has discovered that some persons within and outside the
police including a retired assistant inspector-general of the same tribe as the
suspects, were making frantic efforts to cover up the matter.
The petition signed by its
Director, South East Operations, Frank Agu Kalu, said their suspicions were
confirmed by the ease with which the suspects were granted bail shortly after
their arrest on the orders of a highly placed officer in Enugu.
It said their release has aggravated
the insecurity of the victims and members of their families who have reported
that they have again started receiving threatening phone calls from anonymous
callers demanded that they dropped the case or suffer reprisals.
The group said its worries over the
sincerity of the police in prosecuting the officers were heightening by reports
that James had been involved in about four other sexual assault/rape cases in
Enugu all of which were coverd up.
“Our sources said DSP Utang
was formerly serving with the Ogun State Police command but due to his
notoriety in similar sexual assaults the authorities posted him at the Police
Detective College Enugu as an instructor so as to limit his unsocial
activities.
Still, the DSP has continued his
despicable act in Enugu under the pretext of security surveillance.
The petition said though the group was satisfied with the
prompt reaction of the police in arresting the suspects when the report was
made, it feared that the matter was about to be covered like a similar rape
case involving police officers in Enugu in 2002.
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