Mrs Christiana Ngozi Nnatuanya, the widow of late Linus Nnatuanya, who died in disbanded Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) Awkuzu cell in 2007, has demanded for the corpse of her husband for proper burial.
She said her Uwani Ebenebe community believed that a man who died in SARS cell and was not buried died a wrongful death.
She also demanded for N50 million compensation to enable her cater for the seven children her husband left behind before his death.
Mrs. Nnatuanya who was led in evidence by her counsel Ekene Okonkwo before the Anambra State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Police Brutality, extra-judicial killings and other related matters sitting in Awka narrated how her husband Linus went to market in January 31,2007 but never returned.
She told the panel that her husband was arrested on his way home from the market and dubbed member of Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State Of Biafra (MASSOB) and was arrested by SARS, taken to their Awkuzu station where he died.
She said: “On 31 January 2007, my husband went to market but did not return. I waited all night and when I called his phone it was switched off.
“On the 6th of January, some one visited me to tell me that SARS officers arrested some people and asked if I had visited SARS office at Awkuzu.
“When I went to SARS Awkuzu station, I saw my husband in cell 4 sweating profusely.
“SARS officers asked me to bring N400, 000.00 which I didn’t have. The next day, I went back to their office with N40 000.00 which I could find but was told that my husband has been transferred to Abuja”.
Mrs. Nnatuanya said it was after some days that a young man Ugochukwu Eze who was released from the same cell informed her that the night before her second visit her husband shouted several times on top of his voice, collapsed and died.
Asked by counsel to the police Obi Innocent, a Superintendent of Police, whether she would blame her husband’s death on police, Mrs. Nnatuanya responded: “if police did not arrest my husband, he couldn’t have died”.
Earlier, Mr. Joseph Ezeonu’s petition against the killing of master Kelechi Ezeonu was heard by the panel.
