Family of raped and murdered teenage girl accuses police of compromise

The family of a teenage girl, Munachi Obasi-Igwe, who was raped and killed in the Amakporo-Agbebo area of Ebonyi State, has accused the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) of compromise as they investigate the incident.

Paul, the distraught father of the victim, made this accusation, as he queried why the police released one of the suspects without charging him to court for prosecution.

It would be recalled that the 17-year-old and her father, who were from Amakporo Onicha village, went to a neighboring town, Agbebo Isu, to grind cassava.

Munachi, a Senior Secondary School (SSS) one pupil at Winners International Secondary School, Amakporo Onicha, was left by her father in the care of some elderly women, who also queued up for the same purpose.

However, after the cassava grinder was done, the victim was said to have headed home when her father didn’t return to pick her. But on her way returning home, some hoodlums raped and murdered her thereafter.

While some of the suspects were arrested for the incident, the police, according to Paul, granted one of them bail.

His words: “This sad incident almost resulted in a war between the two communities as my village people were already on ground but the elders of the town intervened and the residents took her corpse to a mortuary with a promise to produce the culprits within seven days.

“The leader of the gang was caught after four days of search and he named three other people involved, making four, who gang-raped and killed my daughter.

“The police told us that the fourth person could not be arrested because he gave an alibi and the rest were transferred to the Abakaliki police headquarters for further investigation.

“The gang leader confessed to the police that my daughter was raped and murdered.”

Corroborating Paul’s claim, a family member of the deceased, Onyegbuchi said a police officer whose identity she couldn’t disclose tipped him off on the suspect’s release.