West Hills Mall incident: Francis-Xavier Sosu calls on Nana Addo to sack IGP

He called for the immediate resignation of the IGP Dr. George Akuffo Dampare as a result of the manhandling of the suspect.

Sosu who doubles as the lead counsel for Shadrach Arloo reacting to an autopsy report issued by the Ghana Police Service said the security service rushed in releasing that statement because what they put out there was not the full report of the post-mortem examination.

Shadrach Arloo Pulse Ghana

Earlier, the police autopsy report confirmed that Shadrach Arloo died of asphyxiation and obstruction of his airway by a foreign body.

According to the autopsy report, the deceased had actually ingested what the police believed to be marijuana.

But the lawyer who doubles as the lawmaker for Madina disagreed and stated that "when it comes to homicide, be it first-degree murder or second-degree murder or in our case manslaughter or either intentional killing or negligent killing, there are several intervening factors because assuming that what police said is true and that he was choked on a foreign substance, it means that while this substance was in the throat of this young man, police managed to apprehend him."

IGP Dr George Akuffo Dampare Pulse Ghana

Explaining to Ghanaians what transpired during the altercation leading to the death of Shadrach Arloo, in a zoom interview on TV3, Francis Sosu said if the deceased’s hands were not even handcuffed, his fingers would have been inserted into his throat to get him to sue the foreign substance.

"But police handcuffs the guy, leave him on the floor and get others to either beat him or tase him on the floor until he died on the floor and so in recounting events leading to the death of this person, police conveniently blight all these things and simply say it's because he got choked off the foreign substance.

"For me, police are being disingenuous, police are not being truthful, police is not being candid and that is bad policing," he stated.

Sosu stressed that the police cannot absolve themselves of blame in this incident and they are carefully taking a posture to escape liability.

He called on the police to open up an investigation into the death of the young man and ensure that anybody who is complicit is sanctioned and also called for the immediate resignation of the IGP.

"If he [Dr. George Akuffo Dampare] fails to resign we are going to petition the President to remove him from office because you cannot be the head of police and see your officers misbehave this way and yet you want to use your own system to cover up for them," he added.