Police delays Mahama’s autopsy report – Pathologist
Dr Lawrence Adusei, the pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Major Maxwell Adam Mahatma’s body has blamed the police for the late releases of the major’s autopsy report.
Appearing before the Accra Central District Court hearing the case, Dr Adusei said the police had made his work difficult hence the late release of the report, five months after the incident.
He told the court that the police had failed to provide all the adequate information required to facilitate his work and that investigators failed to meet him to furnish him with certain important information.
He said things such as the crime scene pictures are still not available to him.
According to him, he only saw the investigators on the case on October 18, a week after the court ordered him to release the autopsy report.
Dr Adusei told the court that he had also not being paid for the past 10 years for all the autopsy work he has done for the police.
When asked why he did not contact the authorities after encountering this difficulty, he said he had in the past encountered the challenge of non-payment of allowances due him by the Judicial Service, which deterred him from pursuing the matter.
“I am supposed to be paid GH¢5.00 for every autopsy that I do and also GH¢10.00 when I testify in court, but for 10 years now, I have not been paid,” he said.
Prosecuting Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), George Amegah refuted the allegation saying that it was not correct that the police were responsible for the delay in the release of the report.
He argued that the pathologist should have written to the police if he was facing any challenges with regard to the autopsy of Major Mahama.
“What prevented him from writing to the police for the information that he needed”, he said.
DSP Amegah explained that apart from Major Mahama’s case, there were numerous murder cases in which the police had not received the autopsy reports.
The court, presided over by Mr Ebenezer Kweku Ansah later ordered the Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to provide all the requirement that Dr Adusei needed in order to come out with the full autopsy report.
The autopsy report, the court ordered, must be ready in three weeks.
The case has since been adjourned to November 23, 2017.
At the last sitting the court ordered the Head of the 37 Military Hospital Pathology Department to furnish the Director-General Police Criminal Investigative Department with the full and detailed autopsy report on the late Major Mahama.
The order also directed Dr Lawrence Adusei, the Pathologist, who conducted the autopsy on the late Major Mahama to come to the court to explain, why the report was yet to be released to the State.
Major Mahama was on duty at Dankyira-Obuasi when on May 29, where he was lynched by some residents, who allegedly mistook him for an armed robber because he had a pistol in his back pocket.
The mob ignored his consistent plea that, he was an officer of the Ghana Armed Forces.
Source: GNA