Mankessim ritual murder saga: Police say they have Nana And Osofo alive

The Ghana Police Service has said it is not true that one of the suspects on remand over the murder of a prospective student-nurse at Mankessim in the Central Region has died while in police custody.

Over the weekend, social media went ablaze with speculations that one of the murder suspects, Christopher Ekow Clarke Quansah, the Tufuhen of Akwakrom, had died of slow poison he drank just before his arrest to assist in the murder investigations.

The viral reports did not give details of where the Tufuhen of Akwakrom drank the supposed slow poison or which doctor pronounced him dead but the wild speculations of his suicide while in custody were on several blogs and news portals, and sparked a heated mixed reaction on social media.

In a rather swift response, the Ghana Police Service issued an official statement which read in part that “the chief and his accomplice who were remanded into police custody by the court to reappear on October 4, 2022, are alive and in custody.

“We, therefore, urge the public to treat the report with the contempt it deserves”, the statement noted.
The lead paragraph of the police statement was direct and clear: “The report circulating in the media that the chief arrested in connection with the murder of a prospective student-nurse at Mankessim has died is false.”

Background

Last Thursday, the 65-year old chief, Christopher Ekow Clarke Quansah and a Christian pastor whose name was given as Michael Darko, aged 48, were both remanded by the Cape Coast District Court 2 over the murder of Georgina Asor Botchwey, a 25-year-old who was seeking admission into the Ankaful Nursing School.

The two remanded suspects are to reappear in Court on Tuesday, October 4, 2022.

They were recently arrested by the Police after investigations showed they were responsible for the murder of the lady after which they shaved her hair and buried her remains in the bedroom of an uncompleted building.

The Police have since dug up the buried body after the accomplice pastor, Osofo Michael Darko led investigators to the burial scene.

When the case was called last Thursday, Prosecuting, DSP Daniel Gadzo said one of the suspects, Osofo Michael Darko was the boyfriend of a sister of the deceased and he is based in Kumasi in the Ashnati Region.

The other suspect, the Tufuhen of Akwakrom, lives in Mankessim in the Central Region.

The deceased, Georgina Asor Botchwey, is a 25-year-old who stays at Yeji in the Bono East Region from where she travelled to the Central Region to seek admission into the Ankaful Nursing School.

On reaching the Central Region, Georgina called Osorfo Darko to assist her but he ended up taking her to the Chief, Christopher Ekow Clarke Quansah and they both murdered her.

The two suspects were reported to have picked Georgina up from Ankaful and sent her in a taxi all the way to a place called Pedu where the chief, had parked his Meredes Benz with registration number GT 8686 C.

From there they drove with Georgina to the town of Akwakrom where they locked her up in a room and seized her phone.

They then left her in the room and went to a place in Mankessim where they dug a grave in the room of an uncompleted building.

They then drove back to pick Georgina to where they had dug the grave, killed her and shaved her hair before burying her in the same grave they had dug.

Family of the deceased filed a complaint after she did not return to Yeji and investigations led to the arrest of the Pastor who confessed to the murder and led then to the chief as well as where their victim was buried.