‘DSS collected, doctored CCTV footage after Fawale’s ordeal’
A prosecution witness, Folasade Odoro, yesterday, told a coroner inquest investigating the alleged killing of a police corporal, Rauf Fawale, that authority of the Department of State Security (DSS) didn’t visit the deceased when he was still lying critically ill at the hospital, neither did it attend to the victim’s hospital bills.

Fawale was allegedly killed by DSS operatives, David Olowoporoku and two others.

Odoro, a former Divisional Police Officer of Dada Estate Police Station, where Fawale served before his death, said in her evidence at the resumed hearing of the matter, before Chief Magistrate Olusegun Ayilara , that Olowoporoku and two other DSS operatives allegedly brutalised Fawale at about 12:45a.m, on January 15, around Riverside Lounge and Bar, Osogbo.

The Chief Superintendent of Police, who currently serves as the Officer in Charge (OC)of the Anti-Fraud Unit of the State Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department (SCIID), said the authority of DSS in Osun State refused to produce Olowoporoku and others involved in the alleged brutality that led to the death of the police officer.

She added that the secret police officials neither visited the hospital to see how Fawale fared nor assisted the deceased’s family to pay the hospital bill.

The witness also disclosed that she was not aware of Fawale’s travails until January 16, when she discovered that the police officer was missing when he was checking the men on ground at the Dada Estate police station.

She said: “Inspector Medinat told me that she was passing by along Oke-Fia, Osogbo and saw people gathered and someone (Fawale) was on the ground along the road and when he got there, he saw three DSS operatives, one of them was later identified as David Olowoporoku.

“She said she held David Olowoporoku that he wouldn’t go and that they took Fawale into her car and they drove to the hospital.

“The Police headquarters wrote to the DSS and on my own, I invited Femi Adewara (DSS operative) and asked him to give me the names of the other two DSS officers and he said he doesn’t know their names.

“ I contacted one Femi Kolade (DSS operative) and told him that what I needed from him is to treat the victim and how we can get the names of other suspects that brutalised the late police officer.

“He told me that they are now working under investigation and that they are under signal communication department.

“He said when official letter arrived their base, they would fish them out.”

ALSO testifying, the manager of the Riverside bar, where one Inspector Medinat Badmus hosted a birthday party the night the incident happened, Tope Ogundeji, said he heard that a fight broke out between DSS and Police officers outside the bar and when he got to the scene, he saw Fawale lying on the ground, while a police officer (Badmus) was holding Olowoporoku.

Ogundeji said after the incident, a DSS operative, Mr. Femi Kolade visited the bar and collected the hard drive of the CCTV footage.

He told the court that after the alleged fight between the DSS operatives and late police officer, he watched the CCTV camera installed at the bar with the director and his wife, but when the DSS operative came to collect it, the latest recording in the footage had been “overriden” (some part already missing).

The witness noted that he went to the hospital, where Fawale was taken for treatment and that he paid for the drugs that were bought.

“I paid N30,500 for the drugs because Fawale was someone I knew. Later, Olowoporoku transferred the money to my account.”

Further hearing on the matter has been adjourned till April 13.