IGP Ibrahim Idris
The Police Commissioner in Abia, Mr Chris Ezike on Wednesday said that the command was still investigating the case of the drowned man at a swimming pool of a hotel on Margret Avenue in GRA, Aba on Nov. 29.
He added that the friends of the deceased were also taken back into custody to continue with investigation in order to rule out foul-play.
The man was said to have gone to swim at the hotel’s pool during their colleague’s birthday party but unfortunately drowned.
Sixteen other friends of the deceased at the party were arrested by the police for investigation and later released on Nov. 30.
A police source told NAN that their release came after preliminary investigations involving CCTV footage previews at the Central Police Station, Aba failed to link them with their colleague’s death.
However, NAN findings showed that State Criminal Investigation Department (CID) on Tuesday re-arrested and moved the boys to the police headquarters in Umuahia.
Ezike said that the police were not in for a witch hunt but wanted to rule out the possibility of foul-play in the death of the young man.
“You talked about CCTV footage. The footage did not show when the boy entered the pool. It only showed his body in the pool. We are looking at negligent act; we are looking at willful act. Willful acts are different from negligent acts but all or part can form the ingredients of a crime.”
“So it is just the process of investigation that is going on. The matter is not an Aba matter because it involved homicide. When somebody has died, it elevates the discourse to a different level of investigation. We are not out to witch hunt anybody but in search of the truth,” he said.
Asked if following his promise to reduce human rights abuses he would stop the process of arresting suspects before investigation, Ezike said there are rules to obey.
“You obey the law and you obey the Constitution. The climes where you do not do that are different from ours. If you talk about the United States of America, they run a system where the prosecuting agencies are attached to the police. So more or less they are part of the investigation.”
“It is not so here. Secondly, they have virtually everything you will need in criminal investigation. They have the CCTV, they have the intelligence electronic devices. With all that they know when to go for arrest. But for us here, we start from the answer to the question. I wish we will get to where we start from the question to the answer,” he said. (NAN)
