Victim of Agression Appeals to President

Ten months after the burning of his Hyundai Elantra taxi with registration GW 4781 R at Ada, the car owner, whose family's entire livelihood depends on daily sales from the taxi, wants President John Agyekum Kufuor to come to his aid.

Samuel Tetteh Cudjoe, who says that his children have been sacked from school, decried the behaviour of the people who took up the investigation which has been left to die a natural death. He, therefore, wants fresh inquisition into the issue in which the Dangme East District Chief Executive, Kofi Plahar, was cited.

A petition he addressed to President Kufuor dated May 5, 2002, stated that he is facing financial difficulty, his children thrown out of school because the only source of income, the taxi, got burnt. According to worried Samuel Tetteh Cudjoe, since the incident occurred, he went to the office of the then Chief of Staff, Mr. Jake Obetsebi Lamptey, where the case was being investigated, several times without success. He, therefore, wants a replacement for the burnt vehicle he bought at ?26 million barely two weeks before the incident. He stated that at a stage the DCE, Kofi Plahar, met with him at the offices of the Tema Municipal Assembly and allegedly assured him of his cooperation in a bid to give the investigators free hand. Since then, nothing has been heard from both the police and the DCE.

It will be recalled that, the DCE on that day reportedly spotted the driver of a taxi with registration GW 4781 R, with one Poku driving carelessly at Ada in the week of the Asafotufiam festival. The district boss reportedly attempted snatching the ignition key without introducing himself to the driver, who mistook him for a robber, hence struggled and pushed him into a gutter and left him. An announcement was effected on Radio Ada calling people in the vicinity to come out and apprehend a supposed armed robber.

Upon reaching a village between Kasseh and Big Ada, the driver found that people had blocked the road with tractors and other objects. As he stopped, the DCE, accompanied by a few men in a four-wheel drive car, followed immediately and ordered the mob to apprehend him. They forced him into the DCE's car, sent to the police station at Ada Foah and he was placed in custody. The following morning police told him that when they went to bring his car, it was found burnt completely.

Further investigations by this paper revealed that the case, first handled by the police at Ada, was taken over by the office of the Chief of Staff, CID Headquarters and later there is no trace to it.