A schoolteacher, Ndubuisi Obiechina, has narrated how operatives of the now-defunct Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) tortured her until she lost her two-month pregnancy.
She disclosed this Saturday while appearing before the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry and Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses & Lekki Toll Gate Incident.
Obiechina told the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel that SARS operatives arrested her in 2017 on trumped-up charges of theft and kidnapping, after wrongly linking her to a suspect.
She disclosed that she ended up spending 22 days in detention during which she was subjected to serious torture.
She said she was tortured by three SARS operatives who she identified as Phillip Rilwan, Christian and Haruna Idowu.
The schoolteacher, who was accompanied to the panel sitting by her husband, said she lost her two-month pregnancy while being tortured.
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She disclosed that she finally regained her freedom after being forced to pay N400,000 as bail, adding that SARS operatives also stole her husband’s N50,000.
Obiechina said, “On June 1, 2017, I received a text message from an unknown number that I had a parcel from DHL. A caller using different numbers asked for my home or office address and I gave him my school address upon my husband’s advice.
“The following day, I saw a black jeep with huge men inside it. One of them was in a DHL uniform. Immediately, they approached me, they started beating me. They said I should enter inside. They said I was a thief, an armed robber. The one in the DHL uniform removed it. My HM (headmistress) was peeping at us. I said let me go and tell her. They said no.
“I said my kid is there, they said no, that I should follow them, that my kid would die there.
“My HM came to the gate; they pointed a gun at me. She asked what was going on. They said, ‘This woman is a thief, a kidnapper. She must follow us and go. They said they were Police, SARS.
“They pushed me inside the car and moved. The men were slapping, beating me. I was two months pregnant. I started vomiting. That’s when they found out I was pregnant. But they kept torturing me. I told them I did not know the suspect.
“They took me to their office at Ikeja. They took me to a shrine. They hanged me, beat me. They said they would force my baby out of me. They said I must produce the person or die there.”