Panel: Police deny throwing down Paralysed man from two- storey building

The Investigative Police Officer, Sergeant Hamzat Haruna, whom a paralysed businessman, Ndukwe Ekekwe, identified as the one who arrested him at Alaba international market, says it was the petitioner, that jumped down from the two- storey building, and not the police who pushed him down as he alleges.

The police witness said Mr Ekekwe was arrested based on Intelligence reports that himself and some others were allegedly breaking and entering into other people’s offices and shops, with arms and other dangerous weapons and that they were also receiving stolen goods from people.

Sergeant Haruna who was led in his evidence by Police counsel Cyril Ejioffor, said that they also obtained Ekekwe’s statement under caution, in which he denied using arms but accepted receiving stolen goods.

The IPO told the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other Matters, that the next day – February 17 2018, they took the suspect back to the market to search his shop, with a search warrant gotten from a Magistrate Court.

According to the officer who is now attached to the IGP’s special tactical force, they found out that he has two more shops and in the process of getting the keys from him, the petitioner jumped down from the building and landed on the ground.

The chairperson of the panel, retired Judge, Doris Okuwobi adjourned the matter to Friday this week for the police to produce a flash drive and the compact disc allegedly showing the petitioner telling the medical doctor who treated him at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital that he jumped down from the building for fear that he didn’t disclose to the police the true number of his shops.