Court orders release of Major Mahama’s autopsy report to CID

An Accra Magistrate Court on Wednesday ordered the Head of the 37 Military Hospital Pathology Department to furnish the Director-General Police Criminal Investigative Department with the full and detailed autopsy report of the late Major Maxwell Mahama.

The order is to be followed on or before the next adjourned date of October 26.

The order also adjoins one Dr Lawrence Adusi, a Pathologist, who supposedly conducted the autopsy on the late Major Mahama to come to the court to explain, why the report is yet to be released to the State for trial processes.

The court presided over by Mr Ebenezer Kwaku Ansah said: “l finds it strange that the report is not given to the State after all these months.

“I order that the Registrar of the court writes to the Head of Pathology Department of the 37 Hospital to furnish the CID Director-General with the full and detailed report and also to the Pathologist in the person of Dr Adusi”.

Prosecuting Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) George Amegah told the court that the order for the autopsy to be done was made by the same court, so it was just fair for the Pathologist to make it available for proceeding to commence.

He said the report was an important material in the trial process in the case before the court; “It is not an intention of the State to delay in the prosecution of the case”.

Mr George Bernard Shaw, Counsel for the accused persons said the delay in the release of the report speaks a lot about the country’s justice delivery system.

He said the delay was also against the constitutional rights of the accused persons, adding that families and friends would also have the “rights to know what killed their beloved”.

At the last sitting, the State presented an amendment charge sheet with the inclusion of two recently arrested suspects.

The Amendment is to consolidate the new arrest with the already accused person in the custody of the police into one charge sheet.

DSP Amega told the court that the prosecution was still waiting for the advice from the Attorney General's Department, since they have presented the duplicate docket to them.

Major Mahama was on a national assignment at Denkyira Obuasi when on May 29, he was lynched by some residents, who allegedly mistook him for an armed robber because he had a pistol in his back pocket.

The mob ignored his consistent plea that, he was an officer of the Ghana Army.