State must assist families of Taadi girls conduct private forensic tests - Adam Bonaa

Security and Safety expert, Adam Bonaa, has recommended that the state provide families of the missing Takoradi girls with the necessary aid, without any form of interferences, to conduct their own forensic tests on the human remains discovered in the course of police investigations.

According to Bonaa, this will give some form of closure to family members who are in doubt of the recent discovery in the case.

The Ghana Police Service brought the year-long search for the missing girls to an end when the Acting Inspector General of Police, James Oppong Boanuh announced Monday the death of the missing girls; Ruth Abakah, Priscilla Kuranchie, Ruth Love Quayson and Priscilla Blessing Bentum.

The families of the girls have expressed fury over the latest report by the Ghana Police that the DNA test carried out on the human remains found at the premises of suspect, Samuel Udoetuk Wills, revealed they are the four lost girls.

The families have refused to believe that the report is true stating that they have not received any substantive proof to ascertain whether the girls are indeed dead.

Adam Bonaa argued that rather than aggrieved families make speculations, they should try contacting those who took part in the DNA process and question the stages involved to be able to point out certain protocols missed.

To him, the involvement of too many people on the subject in a diabolical bid for their own interest may restrain the family from having the urge to do another test but he insisted that the “state should assist them, no matter how much it is going to cost, to subject this to another test”.

“They should do their own because that permanent state of denial comes in play. Because you have too many people speaking to a subject that sometimes for their own parochial interest try to spin it around and try to confuse everybody and don’t go to get the report.”



On assertions that the police did not involve family members while the tests were being conducted, the Security expert noted that, “You know I believe that in criminal investigations, they found something that is suspected to be human remains. At the point the police themselves couldn’t have said it is human remains. You have to find out if it is human remains then you move on to whose remains are these”.

He further indicated, “…so if you brought the family members in, and it ends up that these remains are not that of your family, have you not violated these other human remains that you have found. And so, mine is that the law mandates the police to do what they have done. They have brought their portion of the case in terms of matching the human remains to their relation. So, for the police, if you’d ask me, I’d say it’s closed”.