There was
drama in Owerri, the Imo state capital, on Friday when operatives of the state
police command intercepted a convoy carrying the corpse of a 39-year-old man,
Kingsley Egwim, home for funeral rites.
The convoy,
which was conveying the corpse from Rivers State to Amauziri in the Isiala
Mbano Local Government Area of Imo State, was accosted at Tetlow by Bank Raod
in Owerri by cops who were on a stop-and-search duty.
On being
searched, a pistol with some live bullets was discovered in one of the buses in
the convoy.
Upon the
discovery, the police arrested the corpse and the mourners and marched them to
the state police command headquarters.
The
development attracted residents, who trooped out to watch the drama.
A police
source told Southern City News that the testimony of one of the arrested persons
made the operatives to force open the casket, leading to the discovery of a
pistol with police insignia
The source said, “While on a stop-and-search
duty, the operatives of the command intercepted a convoy conveying a corpse
home.
“Their attire and disposition raised the
curiosity of the men and we quickly flagged them down. While their vehicles
were ransacked, a pistol and bullets were recovered.
“We quickly
marched them to the state command headquarters, where we forcefully opened the
casket and found a pistol with police insignia on it. The pistol was with the
corpse inside the casket.
“From
preliminary investigation, the youths, numbering 72 – both male and female –
are members of a cult group from Rivers State, who were possibly attending the
funeral of one of their members.
“What a
pistol was doing inside a casket is what we do not understand. The pistol has
police insignia, meaning that they might have killed a police officer and took
his pistol or they stole it from policemen after attacking them.”
When our
correspondent visited the command headquarters, the suspected cultists were
seen being interrogated by operatives of the command.
Another
source told our correspondent that the tattoos and knives cults on the bodies
of the suspects indicated that they were dreaded cultists.
Southern
City News gathered that the Commissioner of Police in the state, Dansuki
Galandanchi, ordered the release of the corpse around 4pm for funeral rites
when the widow and father of the deceased came to the police command to
identify the deceased.
Our correspondent saw some relatives of the
deceased carrying the casket out of the command headquarters while police
impounded the ambulance and other vehicles the suspects were arrested in.
The wife of
the dead and her father were seen walking behind those carrying the casket out
from the police premises.
The Police
Public Relations Officer, Andrew Enwerem, said two pistols, one with police
insignia, and 44 rounds of live ammunition, were recovered from the suspects.
Enwerem, who
said the arrest was as a result of the community policing strategy of the CP,
gave the assurance that the suspects would be charged to court at the end of
investigation.
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