CID boss puts kidnapped Takoradi girls in danger

The Director of Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID) appears toying with emotions of the families of the three girls kidnapped in Takoradi in the Western Region, by claiming she knows their location, but failing to give details as to why they have not been rescued.

Her claim, according to security watchers might also put the lives of the girls by name Ruth Quayson, Priscilla Blessing Bentum and Priscilla Koranchie in severe danger.

DCOP Maame Tiwaa Addo Danquah, at a press briefing yesterday, said “together with the BNI [Bureau of National Investigations], we have worked very well and currently, we know where the girls are. I am unable to give the details because we don’t want to compromise their safety”.

Although, this might be this might be the most significant piece of good news for the families and sympathisers of the kidnapped girls, who are have spent the last few months protesting and demanding urgency from the CID, the police officer did not mention which country the girls are currently as suspicions are rife that they are in the custody of Nigerian kidnappers.

DCOP Addo Danquah, urged the anxious families to remain steadfast, assuring that for “the ladies, we know where they are and they safe.”

“It has taken us over three months to even identify where the ladies are and what we don’t want to do is to do anything that will jeopardise the safety of that.”

The Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) recently took over investigations into the kidnapping of three girls.

Security agencies from the United Kingdom and the USA have also been aiding attempts to find the kidnapped girls.

The girls are believed to have been kidnapped between August 2018 and January 2019.

The main suspect in the kidnapping, Sam Udoetuk Wills, is currently before a court after he escaped from jail in December 2018 following his first arrest. He was later rearrested at Nkroful.

The Western Regional Police Command set up a committee to investigate claims by the suspect that he was aided by an officer of the CID to escape.

But the committee is yet to arrive at a conclusion amid outrage from the public.

Over the period, residents in the metropolis have voiced concern over the pace at which investigations have progressed.

Some groups have held protests and have also petitioned the President and the Sekondi Regional Coordinating Council over the case.

Aside from the main suspect, some other arrests have been made in the course of the investigations. But these arrests did not result in any substantive leads.

Some eight persons were arrested in the Eastern Region over the kidnapping during a swoop by the regional command in the Lower Manya Krobo municipality of the Eastern Region.