By Akoma Chinwoke

THE last may not have been heard on the gruesome murder of Johnson Idima Ukariwe, 44, at Obigbo, a crime currently being investigated by the Rivers State Criminal Investigations Department, CID, Port Harcourt, Rivers State.  The deceased lived with his adopted half brother, Innocent Ebi Ukariwe, 58, his wife, Nnenna, and their children at No. 4, Umusawyer Street, Obigbo.

About a month ago, Innocent was reported to have taken the lifeless body of his half brother to deposit at a mortuary in Obigbo.  While there, he was accosted by mortuary attendants as to what happened to the deceased.  Initially, he reportedly denied knowledge of the cause of death, but when prodded, as the attendants refused to accept a butchered, bloodied corpse, he allegedly confessed that his half brother died after a fight with his (Innocent’s) wife and children.  ‘Why did he not report to the police?’, mortuary attendants wanted to know.  And to this, he had no immediate answer.  It was at that stage, the mortuary attendants invited the police.

Initially, the police arrested Innocent and his grown up children as suspects.  They sought to arrest the wife but she escaped.  Following the nature of the body, as the corpse was allegedly drained of blood, the investigators intensified efforts to arrest Innocent’s wife. They made to his mother-in-law’s home, some reasonable distance away,  where the police allegedly found a basin of blood suspected to be from the deceased.  The basin of blood was said to be placed on a table.

Another version of the story alleged that it was neighbours, including townsmen of the family that eventually got wind of what happened and called in the police, as Innocent made to deposit the lifeless body in the mortuary at Obigbo.

Subsequently, the suspects, Innocent, his sons and the mother-in-law were taken into custody and later transferred from the Obigbo Police Station to the CID Headquarters, Port Harcourt, while the attempt to arrest Nnenna (his wife) continued.    Barely a week after the dastardly act, Nnenna was arrested and also taken into custody.

However, there was a new twist to the story as the police ended up granting bail to Innocent, a murder suspect, while still holding the wife, the children and the mother-in-law.  This, immediately raised eyebrows of a police cover-up.   Concerned neighbours said they saw the bail granted to Innocent as the beginning of a cover-up for this heinous crime. But the police story is different.

Shockingly, a week later, the remaining suspects (Nnenna and children) were all released on police bail, an action, neighbours and towns people said,  has confirmed their fears of a cover-up.