Three in court over death and secret burial of girl

Three persons including an assembly member and a fetish priest have appeared before an Aflao Circuit Court over the death and secret burial of a five-year-old girl whose parentage is in doubt.

The court, presided over by Owoahene-Acheampong on March 7 granted an order for the exhumation of the body for autopsy to determine the cause of death.

Isaac Setsoafia, Assembly Member of Gbogbla Electoral Area of the Ketu-South Municipal Assembly, Fofone Galley, the fetish priest and his wife Mawushie Sevor, a trader, were charged provisionally for hindrance of inquest and failing to report death and burial.

Their pleas were not taken and were remanded in police custody. However a High Court at Denu on March 8, this year, quashed the Circuit Court’s remand of the suspects by granting them bail in the sum of Ghs 5,000.00 each.

The Assembly Member applied for the bail to enable him to attend his mother’s funeral rites last weekend.

They would reappear at the Circuit Court on March 26, this year.

Mr Stephen Wuni, a Detective Police Inspector at Aflao told the court that in 2011, Mawushi, wife of Sevor, brought home a “strange girl” claiming she picked her from her lunatic mother at a cemetery in the area. He said the couple named her Justine.

Mr Wuni said the couple and the Assembly Member claimed they reported the issue of the strange girl to the police.

The Prosecutor said months later the girl allegedly fell sick and was treated at a wayside clinic on the advice of the Assembly Member but Justine died two weeks later.

Mr Wuni said the couple claimed they informed Setsoafia of the death, who (Setsoafia) took photographs of the girl as she laid in state in the couple’s house and gave a parcel of land at Torve cemetery where the couple buried the girl at night without a report to the police.

He said no one in the couple’s family or the police were informed about the death and burial of the girl.

Mr Wuni said Dadu Dotse-Sevor, a brother of Mawushi Sevor who had not been seeing Justine, asked about her and was told she had died and was buried.

He said suspecting foul play, Dotse-Sevor informed one Emmanuel Tenyo, a retired soldier and family head, and a report was made to the police.