Police Retrieve Exhumed Bodies Kept At Palace After Ofori Panin Fie Sold Cemetery To Investor

Suhum District Police Command in the Eastern Region on Thursday April 20, 2023 stormed Amanase Chief’s Palace to retrieve skeletons of exhumed human bodies kept at the palace. The bodies were exhumed from the royal cemetery in the community after it was reportedly sold to an investor by Okyenhene Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin to be used for construction of fuel station.

The bodies exhumed include late chiefs and royals. Two of the exhumed bodies were freshly buried. While one of the fresh corpses have been reburied, the other has been kept at the Suhum Government Hospital morgue. However, the Gyaasehene of Amanase, Obenfo Addo Agyekum who doubles as Acting Chief of the community decided to keep the exhumed skeletons of late chiefs of the community in a room at the palace.

This created uproar in recent times among some royal family members and residents. Police invited the chief to write his statement about the incident on Thursday. Subsequently, the Police CID stormed the palace to evacuate the skeletons to the morgue after minutes of back and forth with the Gyaasehene and some of his sub chiefs.

Obenfo Addo Agyekum however said “the cemetery has been sold to an investor as a result we have to exhume the bodies. So Okyenhene Osagyefuo Amoatia Ofori Panin himself ordered that the bodies be exhumed to enable the investor develop the land so we held a community durbar, invited everybody including pastors, opinion leaders to discuss the matter”.

He continued that “So after exhuming the bodies we realized we have to create a new royal cemetery to rebury skeletons of the late Chiefs. We tried several times to get earmarked land for that purpose but were unsuccessful so we decide to keep the skeletons in a room here at the palace until we get cemetery to rebury them.

We had two fresh bodies which we sent to Suhum government hospital but we managed to bury one, the other body is still at the morgue”. At the time of filing this story, the Chief was still at the Suhum Police CID for further interrogation.