DSS collected CCTV footage after Fawale’s ordeal – Witness
BY TIMOTHY AGBOR, OSOGBO
A Chief Superintendent of Police in the Osun State Police Command, Folasade Odoro, on Wednesday informed a coroner inquest investigating the circumstances surrounding the alleged killing of a police corporal, Rauf Fawale, by an operative of the Department of State Security (DSS), David Olowoporoku and two others, that authority of the secret police didn’t visit the deceased when he was still lying critically ill at the hospital and neither did the security service attend to the victim’s hospital bills.
Odoro, the former Divisional Police Officer of Dada Estate Police Station, where Fawale served before his death, said in evidence at the resumed hearing of the matter that Olowoporoku and two other DSS operatives had allegedly brutalised Fawale at about 12:45am, the wee hours of January 15, around Riverside Lounge and Bar, Osogbo.
Odoro, who currently serves as the Officer in Charge of the Anti-Fraud Unit of the State Criminal Investigation Department, said the authority of DSS in Osun State refused to produce Olowoporoku and others involved in the alleged brutality that led to the death of the police officer adding that it did not visit the hospital to see how Fawale was faring nor assisted the deceased’s family to pay the hospital bill.
The witness also disclosed that she was not aware of Fawale’s travails until January 16 when she discovered that the cop was missing when he was checking the men on ground at the Dada Estate Police Station.
According to her, “Inspector Medinat told me that she was passing by along Oke-Fia, Osogbo and she saw people gathered and someone (Fawale) was on the ground along the road and when he got there, he saw three DSS men, one of them, later identified as David Olowoporoku. She said she held David Olowoporoku that he wouldn’t go and that they took Fawale into her car and they drove to the hospital.
“The Police headquarters wrote to the DSS and on my own, I invited Femi Adewara (DSS operative) and asked him to give me the names of the other two DSS officers and he said he doesn’t know their names. I contacted one Femi Kolade (DSS operative) and told him that what I needed from him is to treat the victim and how we can get the names of other suspects that brutalised the late police officer. He now told me that they are now working under investigation and that they are under signal communication department. He said when official letter arrived their base, they would fish them out.
“I also invited the bar manager to the station and he told me that every evening, some DSS officers always come around to the bar to harrass the people entering it and he said he has never reported to anybody. He said they (DSS operatives) always tell him that their director sent them to the area. After, I compiled the case file and transferred it immediately to the headquarters where it was detailed for discreet investigation. The day Fawale gave up the ghost, I called the DSS and none of them answered me.”
Also giving evidence at the coroner, the manager of the Riverside bar where one Inspector Medinat Badmus hosted a birthday party the night the incident happened, Tope Ogundeji said he heard that a fight broke out between DSS and Police officers outside the bar and when he got to the scene, he saw Fawale lying on the ground while a police officer (Badmus) was holding Olowoporoku.
Ogundeji said after the incident, a DSS operative, Mr Femi Kolade visited the bar and collected the hard drive of the CCTV footage. He told the court that after the alleged fight between the DSS operatives and late police officer, the CCTV camera installed at the bar was watched by himself, the director and his wife but when the DSS operative came to collect it, the latest recording in the footage has been “overriden” (some part already missing).
The witness noted that he went to the hospital where Fawale was taken to for treatment and that he paid for the drugs that were bought. “I paid N30,500 for drugs because Fawale was someone I knew. Later, Olowoporoku transferred the money to my account.”
Meanwhile, Chief Magistrate Olusegun Ayilara adjourned the sitting till April 13 for continuation of hearing.
