We Lost 2 Pregnancies Because of Torture in SARS Custody -Couple
The Lagos State Judicial Panel on Restitution for Victims of Special Anti-Robbery Squad SARS Related Abuses and other Matters were on Saturday told by a couple how they lost a two months pregnancies due to SARS torture.
Mr Okuchukwu
Obiechina and Mrs Ndubisi Obiechina told the nine-panel that they were awarded
N2million, against SARS, by the Federal High court sitting in Lagos, but that
it was dismissed by the court of appeal.
While narrating their ordeal in the hands of
SARS, Mrs Nububisi Obiechina, a teacher, told the panel they were arrested on
June 2, 2017, and were detained for 22 days, in SARS custody.
she said,
“On June 1, 2017, I received a text message from an unknown number that I had a
parcel from DHL. A caller using different numbers asked for my home or office
address and I gave him my school address upon my husband’s advice.
“The
following day, I saw a black jeep with huge men inside it. One of them was in a
DHL uniform. Immediately, they approached me, they started beating me. They
said I should enter inside. They said I was a thief, an armed robber. The one
in the DHL uniform removed it. My HM (headmistress) was peeping at us. I said
let me go and tell her. They said no.
“I said my
kid is there, they said no, that I should follow them, that my kid would die
there.
“My HM came
to the gate; they pointed a gun at me. She asked what was going on. They said,
‘This woman is a thief, a kidnapper. She must follow us and go. They said they
were Police, SARS’.
“They pushed
me inside the car and moved. The men were slapping, beating me. I was two
months pregnant. I started vomiting. That’s when they found out I was pregnant.
But they kept torturing me. I told them I did not know the suspect.
“They took
me to their office at Ikeja. They took me to a shrine. They hanged me, beat me.
They said they would force my baby out of me. They said I must produce the
person or die there.”
“They
brutalised me in the name of interrogating me.
As a
pregnant woman, I did not eat or drink for one week and in the process I lost
the baby.
“It was later after I left SARS that I went to
the hospital that I found that the baby was gone, and I had to flush it out,”
she said.
The teacher
identified some of the SARS officers who allegedly tortured the couple as Phillip
Rieninwa, Christian and Haruna Idowu.
She said she
was pregnant again during her husband’s second arrest, adding that Okwuchukwu
was only released following an order of the Federal High Court in Lagos.
“Due to the
emotional trauma, I lost my second pregnancy. We sued SARS at the Federal High
Court and we were awarded N2 million damages for the torture and brutality.
“Since then they have not paid the money. The case was taken to the Appeal
Court and it was dismissed and till now they (SARS) have not done anything,”
she said. Ndubisi alleged that SARS officers also collected N50,000 from her
husband, while the duo had to bail themselves with a total of N400,000 from
SARS custody.
The News
Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that a copy of the judgment the couple obtained
against SARS was admitted into evidence by the nine-member Judicial Panel.
The Chairman
of the panel, Retired Justice Doris Okuwobi, noted that hearing of Obiechinas’
petition had to be adjourned because names of some SARS officials had been
mentioned.
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