Some policemen attached to the Special Anti-Cult Unit of the Anambra State Police Command have been accused of breaking into a private hostel housing students of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, in a bid to arrest suspected fraudsters in Ifite, in the Awka South Local Government Area of the state.
News gathered that during the invasion, which happened around 4am on Sunday, the policemen, who were said to be heavily armed, allegedly beat up an unclad female student.
A resident, who gave his name only as Benneth for security reasons, said the policemen brutalised some of the students when they denied knowing any fraudster.
Benneth said, “The hostel is called Prince Godwin Lodge, and it is outside the school. What we gathered was that there had been robbery operations in the area. So, on Sunday, the students started to hear bangs on the gate and doors of the hostel.
“The undergraduates thought the people banging the door were armed robbers because of what happened in the past and they raised the alarm. It was when they entered after breaking the doors of some flats that the students realised that they were policemen as they wore jackets with the inscription of SPAC.
“The students said the policemen started harassing them and said they were looking for Yahoo boys. One of the students, a girl, said some of the policemen entered her room and threatened her to name the boys in the hostel doing Yahoo Yahoo (Internet fraud). The policemen beat her, took some of the students’ phones, laptops, and televisions and arrested some of them. But the girl was able to use her mobile phone to record them as they left the hostel with the students.”
Narrating her ordeal in a video clip recorded by some aggrieved students of the institution, the female student said the policemen beat her while she was naked.
She said, “They broke the door and came into my flat and ever since they broke the door, if we want to sleep, we usually use a chair to brace the door at the back. This is where they were beating me and I was naked.”
