Police retrieve exhumed bodies kept at Amanase palace

Barely 24 hours after Ghanaguardian.com reported that about 50 bags of human skeletons and dead bodies were being kept at Amanase palace in the Eastern Region, the Suhum District Police Command has stormed the place to retrieve the items.

The Okyenhene Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin is said to have sold the royal cemetery in the neighborhood to an investor so that it could be utilized to build a gas station. As a result, the bodies were exhumed from there.

The exhumed remains include those of late chiefs and royals. Two of the bodies that were exhumed had just been buried.

One of the recently discovered bodies was reburied, but the other was left at the morgue of Suhum Government Hospital.

However, the Gyaasehene of Amanase, Obenfo Addo Agyekum who doubles as Acting Chief of the community decided to keep the exhumed skeletons of late chiefs of the community in a room at the palace.

This created uproar in recent times among some royal family members and residents.

Police invited the chief to write his statement about the incident in Thursday.

Subsequently, the Police CID stormed the palace to evacuate the skeletons to the morgue after minutes of back and forth with the Gyaasehene and some of his sub chiefs.

Obenfo Addo Agyekum however told Starr News, “the cemetery has been sold to an investor as a result we have to exhume the bodies. So Okyenhene Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin himself ordered that the bodies be exhumed to enable the investor develop the land so we held a community durbar, invited everybody including pastors, opinion leaders to discuss the matter”.

He continued that “So after exhuming the bodies we realized we have to create a new royal cemetery to rebury skeletons of the late Chiefs. We tried several times to get earmarked land for that purpose but were unsuccessful so we decide to keep the skeletons in a room here at the palace until we get cemetery to rebury them. We had two fresh bodies which we sent to Suhum government hospital but we managed to bury one, the other body is still at the morgue”.

At the time of filing this story, the Chief was still at the Suhum Police CID for further interrogation.

Credit: Starfm