Missing Lands Commission Lady: Judge absent in court, case adjourned

Court proceedings in the case involving Dr Wilberforce Aggrey, the husband of the Ashanti Regional Lands Commission staff who went missing, scheduled to come off at the Kumasi High Court, Tuesday, 21 February 2023, did not happen as planned.

This is because the trial Judge, Justice Daniel Obeng, was absent from court.

Hearing, therefore, had to be adjourned.

A witness in the case who was scheduled to testify and ‘Friends of Rhoda,’ a group made up of classmates and work colleagues of the missing lands commission officer, were all in court.

Dr Aggrey who is standing trial over the disappearance of his wife and a staff of the Lands Commission, Rhodaline Amoah-Darko, was granted a bail of GHS300,000.

The Kumasi High Court granted the KNUST lecturer bail with one surety to be justified.

Dr Aggrey who was initially unable to meet the bail conditions, however, met it eventually.

Meanwhile, three Teaching Assistants (TAs) from the KNUST have so far mounted the witness box to testify against him.

Dr Aggrey has been charged with kidnapping.

The KNUST lecturer was invited for interrogation by the police following incoherent statements he made when his wife went missing on Monday, 30 August 2021.

The husband made a report to the police on Thursday, 2 September 2021, after the wife allegedly left home at Gyenyase in Kumasi and did not return.

Per police investigations, communication from the KNUST lecturer’s phone reporting the incident to family members and that from the alleged kidnappers using the missing lady’s phone to demand a ransom were from the same location close to the residence of the couple.

The prosecutor for the case told the court that the lecturer had admitted to sending messages from the wife’s phone under threats from the alleged kidnappers that his family would be harmed if he failed to do so.

He revealed that the messages that had been sent from Mrs Aggrey’s phone to her husband’s phone and later from her husband’s phone to relatives were all sent from the same location near the couple’s residence, according to their investigations.

He further revealed that the lecturer explained that he had to send his wife to a location near the Volta Lake to ensure her safety.

The Lands Commission staff left home for Sunyani on Monday, 30 August 2021, and has since not been found.