The Manager of a Guest House at Iwo in Osun State, Mr Afeez Adio, has disclosed that an officer of the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) identified has Odua admitted to killing a guest at the hotel after attempts to robe the deceased as armed robber failed. He added that the said officer while fielding questions from the Assistant Commissioner of Police at the State Police Command headquarters at the time claimed there was a cutlass in the deceased’s bag, a position Adio said was not true. Speaking before the State Panel of Inquiry investigating police brutality and extrajudicial killing, the manager said when the deceased checked into the hotel, he carried a bag which the deceased claimed contained money.
The deceased’s father, Mr Rasheed Ayinla, had petitioned the panel stating that his son, Ismaila Rasheed was killed and robbed of N4 million in a hotel where he lodged along Iwo/Ibadan Expressway, Iwo, Osun State on August 18, 2020. He noted that two Police Officers, identified as ‘Odua and Aare’ from the disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) were accommodated in the Guest House by the owner, Alhaji Dauda Adigun, on the consent of the Divisional Police Officer, (DPO) Iwo, DPO free of charge.
ALSO READ: Unemployment: Senator asks governors to cut security votes He said “one of the officers of the SARS called me that they had shot dead one of the thieves that invaded the Guesthouse, but when I got to the room, I found Ismaila Rasheed in his pool of blood and I told them he is my guest and not a thief. “When they wanted to carry his corpse out of the hotel, I noticed that the bag he brought into the hotel the night before had been tampered with suggesting that its content was removed.
“The police said he brought a cutlass into the hotel to rob but I vehemently opposed it and insisted that he did not lodge into the hotel with a cutlass. “We were taken to the Police Command Osogbo with the owner, a lady and myself over the issue. We met the two officers (Odua and Aare) and the Assistant Commissioner of Police. The ACP asked the two officers who shot the guest and Odua admitted to have killed him”.
READ ALSO: Unemployment: Senator asks governors to cut security votes Also, in his testimony, the father of deceased, Alhaji Ayinla Rasheed, who could not control his emotion said his deceased’s while struggling for his life, called his wife to inform her he was shot by police before the wife subsequently called and told him. He said, “My son was killed after he was robbed of the money he wanted to use in buying ram in the northern part of Nigeria.
“He called his wife informing her of the attack by the two SARS officers around 3:30 AM and the wife called me. Before we get to the scene when the day breaks, the police told us that he was killed. “The police handed over N977,000 to us which they claimed they recovered from his hotel room. They gave us N100, 000 for our transport fare. They called us on another day and gave us N100,000. “The ACP later invited the wife of the deceased and myself, he pleaded with us and when we are going he gave us N700,000. He claimed that the money was not part of the one they recovered from the deceased. “He later sent another N300,000 to the wife and N20,000 as transport.”
