#ENDSARS: I was Crippled, Began To Wear Diapers After SARS Torture – Victim tells Panel
By Dayo Badmus
A victim of SARS-related abuse, Ndukwe Ekwekwe has told the Judicial Panel of Inquiry sitting in Lagos how men of the defunct Special Anti-Roberry Squad, SARS tortured him until he became crippled and his bladder damaged.
The petitioner also told the Panel that he now wears diapers.
Ekwekwe’s mother, Mrs. Ibekwe, led him into the hearing room on a wheelchair.
In his testimony, Ekwekwe said four SARS officer visited his shop on February 16, 2018.
“I asked them what my crime was, but none of them told me. Other traders in the shopping complex equally asked the same question of the police officers.
At a point, the Police officers began to shoot to scare people away,” he said.
Ekwekwe said a certain Inspector Hamisu Haruna led the SARS, who subsequently detained him at the ‘Area F’ Police station.
At the station, the petitioner said he was beaten, stabbed in his hand and on his back, tortured, and dumped in a cell where the inmates subjected him to another round of beating.
The Police officers reportedly took Ekwekwe to his shop the next day, February 17.
He also alleged that the officers broke into his shop and auctioned off his goods.
Ekwekwe said he protested to the officers, following which one of them pushed him off a two-storey building.
The petition said his spinal cord got broken and he was taken to the Lagos University Teaching Hospital, LUTH.
Speaking, the Panel Chairperson Justice Doris Okwuobi (retd) admitted hospital documents, X-rays, telephone numbers of the indicted officers and other documents tendered by the petitioners as exhibits.
Okwuobi thereafter adjourned further hearing into the petition to November 13.
