Scores of people trooped to the Madina Divisional Police Command yesterday to catch a glimpse of a female head porter, who had allegedly been arrested for carrying severed heads of two babies.
Alhough the news turned out to be a hoax, the people, mainly hawkers and porters, who besieged the police station would not leave despite the persistent efforts of the police to disperse them.
Trading activities were temporarily brought to a halt as traders abandoned their wares and rushed to the scene.
Head porters, mostly women, held their aluminium head pans or kept them on their heads, while hawkers carried their wares and stood outside the police station.
Some stood in groups discussing what they had heard and seeking clarification from one another.
Dispersing the crowd
After hours of trying to control the crowd, the police managed to get them out of the compound, but dozens of the people, especially, the head porters, stood outside the wall.
Although it was difficult to tell the source of the information, most of the people who spoke to the Daily Graphic said they had heard the rumour at the Madina Market at about 10a.m.
As 2 p.m., more people were converging on the police station. While some of the people alighted from trotros and taxis, others parked their cars when they heard the news.
How a kayayo heard the news
One of the head porters, Amina Issa, said she heard the news at the Madina Market while she was busily plying her trade.
“I was going to carry a woman’s goods to a shop when I heard that one of my colleagues was found carrying the heads of two babies and that she has been sent to the Madina Police Station so I quickly ran there to find out if it is true.”
She said she heard that the said kayayo could not find the person who hired her services to carry the load and so after searching effortlessly, she asked a man at the Madina Market to help her put the heavy load down.
“When the man helped her, she told him her story and when they tried to find out what was in the sack, they saw blood dripping from the sack which had been placed in the aluminium head pan of the kayayo.”
She said that was when the alarm was raised and the people trooped to the police station.
It is not true
However, the Madina Divisional Police Crime Officer, Superintendent of Police, Mr Joseph Oppong, said there was no such case at any of the police stations in the division.
He said he got the news after seeing the crowd “and since then they have been converging on our premises even though the police have told them it is not true.”
A trader at the market, Mr Felix Koomson, on the other hand, expressed the opinion that the police might be hiding something from the public.
Daily View Gh
