The Esiama District Police Command in Ellembelle in the Western Region has detained a midwife and her husband, a teacher, for allegedly abandoning a 4-year-old in a wilderness to perish.
Barnabas Ewureku, an assemblyman representing the Asaasetre-Ebowu Electoral Area, claims that the parents left their infant because a fetish priest implied that she was a bad kid.
“I went to the farm, and on my way back, I heard a baby crying. I was scared because the place is a deep forest, and there is no way a baby could go there alone”.
“I quickly came home and informed the chiefs for assistance. We went there and met a fetish priest who was bold to tell us he had left the baby there because she was an evil child. We tried to rescue the baby, but this fetish priest relocated her,”
“We arrested and took them to the police station. Later that day, some police officers accompanied us to the forest, including the fetish priest, and we found the young girl wrapped in weeds with concoctions all over her”.
“She was alive with blood oozing from her nose and other parts of her body. Immediately we rescued her; she died, unfortunately. Later the same day, we arrested her parents,” he narrated.
The child’s parents were also taken into custody after the incident since it was thought that the fetish priest had done it with their approval.
According to Jonas Kabutey, a paralegal working on the case, the court has remanded the four suspects while leaving the other two on the loose.
“These are educated parents (wife is a professional midwife and husband a trained a teacher) who are supposed to know better, but they decided to hurt such a young baby. Social Welfare has trained people to take care of such special children,; all they had to do was bring her to our office.
“We have already arraigned the four persons, including the parents of the baby before the court,, and they have been remanded. Two others who assisted the fetish priest in committing the crime are at large, and we hope they will be arrested soon,” he revealed.
