Police and social welfare officials returned to the scene of the alleged assault of a woman in Auchi, Edo.
The victim and a suspect accompanied the officials to identify other persons captured in videos of the incident. The development followed the September 3 incident, in which the woman was allegedly beaten, stripped naked and filmed by a crowd following a dispute over an OPay account at a POS stand.
Eugenia Abdallah, the commissioner for women affairs and social development, initiated the follow-up after seeing a video of the incident and ensured that the woman was brought to Benin for investigation and support.
She said the woman had been receiving medical, psychological and counselling support at the Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC).
Ms Abdallah said she would continue to follow up on the case to ensure that the woman got justice, in line with the ministry’s efforts to strengthen responses to gender-based violence in the state. Constantine Ogbofeni, operator of the POS stand, was taken to the scene with the woman as investigators sought to establish what happened and identify additional suspects.
During the visit, the woman also identified her residence, about three houses from the POS stand, giving investigators more information about the area.
Mr Ogbofeni’s sister-in-law, Kehinde Alabi, and her husband, Patrick Adams, who were also arrested over the incident, remained in police custody in Benin as investigations continued.
Mr Ogbofeni’s wife, Bernice Alabi, was operating the business and gave her account of the disputed transactions. According to her, she initially gave the woman the OPay account details when she visited the stand to ask about using the account for customer payments.
She said she was not present when the situation escalated but later quarrelled with her husband after learning that he had called people to the scene and allegedly described the woman as a thief. According to her, the couple became suspicious after some people who transferred money into their OPay account contacted them, alleging that they had paid for hair products but received no goods.
She said their concerns were heightened by a previous fraud incident in which they lost about N900,000.
Mr Ogbofeni said the woman used the account to receive N14,000, another N14,000 and N7,500 before presenting receipts and collecting N34,500 cash after a N1,000 charge was deducted. He said he became concerned that customers who transferred money into the account might not receive the goods they had paid for, leaving him and his wife responsible for the transactions.
Mr Ogbofeni said Ms Alabi later arranged a N20,000 transaction and sent the receipt to the woman to lure her back to the POS stand. He said when she returned, he tried to verify the receipt and alerted the couple nearby. According to him, Adams confronted the woman, after which a crowd gathered, and the situation escalated.
The woman, however, gave a different account, alleging that she was beaten, her top was torn, and she was stripped and filmed by the crowd. She denied involvement in fraud, saying she traded clothes, shoes and hair products.
The woman alleged that she was forced to refund the disputed money into Mr Ogbofeni’s OPay account after being told it would be returned to her. She said she later contacted some customers involved in the disputed transactions and learnt that they had not received the money she refunded into the account.
According to her, her landlord was alerted and brought the police, who arrived at the scene and made an arrest. The three suspects remained in police custody as investigations continued to establish individual responsibility and determine whether more arrests would be made.
After Wednesday’s visit, Mr Ogbofeni was returned to police custody, while the woman was taken back to SARC to continue receiving medical, psychological and counselling support.
(NAN)
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