Woman remanded for causing severe burns to girl’s body
A Takoradi Circuit Court has remanded into prison custody a Forty seven year old trader at Essipong, a suburb of Sekondi for inflicting severe bodily harm on a 17 year old Junior High School student.
The woman poured a pot of boiling water on the victim when she attempted to separate a fight. The 17 year old whose name has been withheld, a JHS Two student of the Essipong M/A Junior High School, is currently in severe pain that even restricts her from wearing a dress to cover her upper body.
Covered in a cloth, she came out of a small single dilapidated room that houses her family including her sick mother who is down with stroke. She showed Maxx News the harm that has been caused to half of her upper body. And she is more concerned about the injury to her right breast.
It’s been five days now since that inhumane act was caused to her body by a woman, who is also a mother. Her only crime was her attempt to stop a fight between her sister and the suspect.
“At about 6:30pm, I was in the room with my siblings taking care of our sick mother. My sister went out and was told that our Uncle’s son had gone to the community to fetch water with several buckets. She was told of how a particular girl argued with him over the number of buckets and even threw his bucket away and got it broken. The tap was eventually closed because of the confusion. But the girl who started the confusion kept on hurling insults publicly and painfully insulted my sick mother by calling her a witch. So my elder sister and I went to the girl’s mother to complain about her daughter’s behavior”.
“But immediately we started speaking her, she got very angry even when we were impressing on her to listen to us. So I came back home leaving my sister there. But my mum asked me to go back there and ask my sister to come home. When I got there my sister had finished talking but the woman pushed her to the ground. And when I attempted to raise her up, the woman took a pot of boiling water from the fire and poured it on me” she narrated.
She could only visit the hospital through the benevolence of her teacher, needs help to get her wounds treated before it deteriorates.
“When the incident happened, my father didn’t have money because he hasn’t been paid for four months. So he asked one of my siblings to get a loan somewhere but he wasn’t successful. He then asked me to plead with my teacher who eventually gave me some money for the Hospital. We then went to the police station and I was treated later. Now I don’t know where else we will get money for my injury to be taken care of. I am seriously in pains. I sleep on one side of my body and sometimes at night I am forced to sit up all night” she lamented. The Headmaster of her school, Andrews Louis, is worried about the poor innocent girls’ condition particularly when she is in her third term getting ready to be promoted to JHS three. He wants the law to take its course.
Public Relations Officer of the Western Regional Police Command ASP Olivia Adiku told Maxx News the suspect, Esther Bawa, who attempted to abscond, was arrested on Thursday May 16, and was remanded Friday, to reappear in Court on June 17.
The woman, popularly known in the Essipong vicinity as Afua Dagarti, is said to have admitted the offence in her caution statement.
Credit: Ebenezer Afanyi Dadzie/Radio Maxx/Takoradi
