Forensic pathologists, on Monday, began exhuming bodies of some victims of the Soka kidnappers’ den in Ibadan for forensic analysis.
This came just as the police dismissed rumours that some victims were still trapped underground.
According to Superintendent of Police Olabisi Ilobanafor, the Public Relations Officer of Oyo State Command, “how can a human being survive underground for more than three weeks without food or drink? Where will they get power to charge the phone people have been saying someone was calling with?
“It is a mere rumour and figment of their imagination. People should not carry rumours that will have psychological effects on families of missing people.
“Today, we have three different teams. We have the Oyo Police team, led by the Assistant Commissioner of Police, CID, Dasuki Galadachi; we have the CID from Force headquarters led by Babale Aminu with four others, including a forensic pathologist, Dr. Eze Nwom, who led the team of pathologists, with an anthropologist.
“A professor, Dr. Olawoyin from the UCH, who is also with them, deals with anything about the throat to the head. They were sent here by the Inspector General of Police.
“We have forensic experts gathering evidence that would help ongoing investigations. They would also exhume some bodies that had been buried for forensic analysis.
“The analysis would also help those whose relations are missing to do DNA test so that anybody whose relatives might have been declared missing could go for forensic test so that it could assist in determining whether they are related to any of the dead.”
When asked why it took so long before the forensic experts came, she said the police in the state had been doing so many things.
“Today is the final stage of the exercise as police from Oyo had earlier visited and carried out series of investigations.
“After this, we shall be handing over the place to the state government who knows what else to be done with it.”
Some of the items collected by the experts were clothes, mats, plates, bottles, metals and any other physical thing seen in the den.
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