Mobile phone technician accuses police of extortion

A Mobile phone technician is accusing a group of Policemen of allegedly extorting GHC640.00 from him.

Narrating his ordeal to this reporter, the victim who pleaded to remain anonymous said on the night of Sunday, July 9, 2023, he went to a popular drinking spot at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle to have a drink, when the group of Policemen on patrol duty invaded the spot and accused him and some other persons at the spot of smoking weed.

He said the Policemen demanded that they accompanied them to the nearest police station after arresting and handcuffing some of the young men for unruly behavior.

According to the victim, the Police marched them into their patrol vehicle and drove them around town demanding from them various sums of money before they let them go.

He said he protested his arrest, but he was asked to pay GHC 2000 before he would be allowed to go home.

He said he pleaded with the officers but the Police paid no attention to him and they began to search through his pockets for money.

Finding only GHC240 in his pocket, the officers forced him to call a friend to transfer the balance of the money to his phone.

Sensing danger, the victim said he called a friend whom the police officers persuaded to transfer the money.

He said his friend only managed to send him GHC400. 00, which one of the officers tried to transfer into his MTN MoMo wallet number bearing the name Emmanuel Tawiah Boison, but was unsuccessful, apparently due to a system failure.

Another officer then tried and successfully transferred the money into his Airtel Tigo wallet number, bearing the name Solomon Amanor Donkor and promptly deleted the transfer message.

The victim said he later confirmed the numbers and the names of the officers used for the transaction.

He said after taking the money from him, the policemen drove him around town and dropped him in the middle of nowhere around Nungua at about 2:00 am, gave him GHC 50 for transportation, and drove off.

He added that he managed to find his way home in the morning not knowing the fate of the other people who were arrested.

The victim is of the strong belief that the names registered on the MoMo wallets are the real and official names of the police who extorted money from him as he was sure one of the officers had the name Boison on his name tag at the time of the incident with his face also appearing on his WhatsApp status bar.

The victim believes that this act by the policemen is a dent in the image of the Ghana Police Service and is therefore passionately appealing to the Police hierarchy to investigate this unfortunate incident to bring the alleged perpetrators to book.

He said he is also willing to assist the Police authority with all the information he gathered on the said policemen, in a bid to get to the bottom of this matter and weed out the bad nuts from the Ghana Police Service.