Adeleke: Coroner Threatens DPO, Others With Arrest
The chairman of the Coroner’s Inquest set up by the State Governor, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, to uncover the circumstances surrounding the death of Senator Isiaka Adeleke, Chief Magistrate Olusegun Ayilara, went tough Wednesday as he threatened to issue a bench warrant against the Divisional Police Officer DPO, of Dugbe Police station, Osogbo and the Officer in charge of Homicide, for shunning the sitting and refusal to testify before it.
The Coroner, Magistrate Ayilara had on 10th, May 2017 ordered for the summon of the Commissioner of Police, Mr Fimihan Adeoye to come and testify before the inquest before the case was adjourned to 15th May 2017.
At the resumed hearing on Monday, neither the commissioner of Police nor his representative were around throughout the duration of the proceedings.
Only five witnesses, the Chief Medical Director (CMD), Biket Hospital, Osogbo, Dr. Adebisi Adenle, Chairman Osun West Senatorial District of the All Progressives Congress APC, Hon. Amobi Akintola, Executive Secretary of Ede South, Hon. Johnson Ojo, Osun State Deputy Governor, Mrs. Titilaoye Tomori and the Chief Medical Director of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Teaching Hospital, Prof. Akeem Lasisi had on Monday testified before the panel.
During the testimonies of the five witnesses, several names were mentioned which include, the Divisional Police Officer DPO of Dugbe Police Station, Osogbo, OC Homicide, one Lasun Olaniyi from Iwo Community, one Engineer Oni and Alfred Aderibigbe. While responding, the coroner, Magistrate Ayilara who frowned at what he described as insensitivity to the Inquest order, threatened to issue a bench warrant against any personalities who fail to appear before it.
“The OC homicide and DPO are expected tomorrow (today). They need to come and I want to say this that nobody is on trial here. This is not a criminal proceeding. I am not going to stop anybody from going back to his or her house and I won’t force anybody to say what he doesn’t want to say.
“We need facts from police officers, medical doctors and other relevant bodies that were involved at the autopsy exercise, most importantly the DPO of Dugbe police Station and OC Homicide.
“By the virtue of the coroner’s law, everyone involves in this exercise must appear to give testimony. And as such, I need the police officer and others to be able to explain to the court that they identified the corpse, that is what we need.
“For this reason, failure to appear before this coroner inquest panel would be interpreted otherwise because if they don’t come, I will assume that they are deliberately frustrating our efforts. “We are constrained and we have limited time of three weeks and this is the second week, we want to take all evidence by the end of this week so that I can use the last week to put things together.
“We issued the summon yesterday (Monday) and they have 48hours to answer, that is why I will fix tomorrow (today) for them. “As a matter of fact, if the necessary parties are not here tomorrow, we will issue bench warrant against them”, Magistrate Ayilara threatened.
He therefore adjourned the hearing till today for continuation.
