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The debate on mob justice has strongly been revived following the death of an Army Captain at Denkyira Obuasi on Monday, 29 May, 2017.

Mr Joseph Botchwey, a victim of mob justice, on Friday 2 June, shared his horrific experience on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM.

According to him, although he and his brother were both rescued by the police, one officer asked the mob why they did not lynch the two of them for the police to have just come for their bodies instead of letting them stay alive.

Recounting his story, Mr Botchwey said: “My brother Aaron and I had gone to meet another guy who lived at Ashalley Botwe, a suburb of Accra, to show us a place to rent.”

“The landlord asked a few questions and said he wouldn’t rent it out because we were not students of the University of Ghana. On our way back to the trotro station, a group of people stopped us and asked: ‘Where is the gun?’ They accused us of being armed robbers and were not ready to listen to us and so began beating us with whatever they could lay their hands on – clubs, stones, and others.

“We were lucky the police came to our rescue, but I remember when the police came, the first thing one officer said was: ‘You should have killed them so that we come for their bodies.’ They then took us to the Madina Police Station where we spent four to five days at the cell.

“The mob was ready to burn us because while they were beating us, I saw another group preparing to burn us with a car tyre. At some point, I couldn’t feel any pain, I was numb. I was seeing faces beating me up, but I wasn’t myself anymore.”

Asked if he knew what necessitated the action of the mob, Mr Botchwey said the attack was led by a pastor ..., who mistook them for armed robbers who had robbed him a week earlier.

“It’s painful to go through this, and this action was led by a pastor. His story was that there was an armed robbery in his house a week before my brother and I went to the area and our mistake was that I had dreadlocks on then, and, so, I looked like one of the robbers. That’s the story he told. So having seen locks on us walking, he assumed we were the robbers who came to his house, and so he gathered the whole community to lynch us,” he recounted.

The Public Relations Officer of the Accra Regional Police Command, ASP Afia Tenge, described the remarks by the police officer as “sad” and said it was the first time learning that a police officer had said that.

ASP Tenge, who herself escaped lynching in Tamale sometime ago, strongly condemned the prevalence of instant justice in the country.