DSP Tehoda fails to report to BNI

0

A Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mrs Gifty Mawuenyegah Tehoda, who is said to be involved in the swapping of 1,020 grammes of cocaine with sodium bicarbonate is alleged to have failed to report herself to the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) for charges to be preferred against her.

A State Attorney, Mr Owusu Ameyaw, made the accusation at the Circuit Court in Accra Monday, but Mrs Tehoda denied the allegations.

Mrs Tehoda, whose lawyer was absent when the case was called, informed the court that she had been reporting herself to the BNI as per the bail conditions.

According to her, she reported herself to the BNI once but she did not meet the investigator.

The trial judge, Ms Audrey Korcuvie-Tay, however, stated that the bail conditions were not before the court for the court to know the terms she was expected to meet.

Mrs Tehoda was, for the third time, granted bail by the Fast Track High Court after the circuit court had declined to grant her bail.

She had earlier been granted bail on two different occasions by the Human Rights Court but the prosecution managed to secure her remand at the lower court.

Her lawyers did not relent in their efforts and finally secured her bail at the Fast Track High Court on February 14, 2012.

The court granted her bail in the sum of GH¢100,000, with two sureties, one to be justified, and directed her to report herself to the police on Mondays.

She is facing one count of abetment of crime, to wit, undertaking an activity relating to narcotic drugs.

The particulars of offence said the suspect, “between July 21, 2011 and December 13, 2011 in the Greater Accra Circuit and within the jurisdiction of this court, did abet one Nana Ama Martins to swap a cocaine exhibit weighing 1,020 grammes with sodium bicarbonate”.

The facts of the case are that following the Vice-President‘s directive on December 4, 2011, the BNI launched investigations into the missing cocaine which was tendered in evidence in Circuit Court One on September 27, 2011 and was admitted, with objection, in evidence for the court in the case involving Nana Martins.

On the following day, September 28, 2011, the defence team objected to the exhibit, claiming it was not cocaine.

According to the prosecution, it would lead evidence to prove that an uncle of Nana Martins, called Yankah, and a sister of hers, Serwah Gyaabah, told a witness in the case that they (uncle and Serwah) managed to turn the cocaine into soda with the help of Mrs Tehoda after the judge and his court clerk had refused to take GH¢4,000 and GH¢1,000, respectively, as bribe.

According to the prosecution, there was another witness to confirm the role played by Mrs Tehoda and the others to turn the cocaine into sodium bicarbonate.

The prosecution further stated that Mrs Tehoda assisted Nana Martins’s family to get a buyer to sell her house in order to raise GH¢10,000 to pay legal fees and other expenses.

She was also said to have invited Nana Martins’s lawyer to her office three times to pay off his legal fees.

It alleged that Mrs Tehoda had informed the lawyer that she, with the connivance of others, had managed to swap the cocaine and that at the trial he should request for a re-testing which was done.

It said evidence would be led to show that Mrs Tehoda jubilated in her office after the narcotic drug found on Nana Martins had tested positive for soda.

 

Source: Daily Graphic

Send your news stories to [email protected] Follow News Ghana on Google News

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here