They alleged that their chief, Nana Broku Ababio, had brought the officers to the town together with some hired thugs (machomen), to beat up and inflict bodily injury on the people.         

Mr. Kwabena Nkrumah, their spokesperson, making the appeal through the Ghana News Agency (GNA), said the incident happened last Sunday and that it was unprovoked.

The indiscriminate firing of guns by the officers, he claimed, sent many terrified children, women and men fleeing to take cover in the bush. The police are however, discounting the claim, insisting that the youth rather attacked the chief and in the confusion, one officer, Lance Corporal Isaac Dwamena, and a civilian, Bright Owusu, got hurt.

Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Juliana Obeng, the Ashanti Regional Public Relations Officer, said four people including a woman, had been arrested for their involvement in the violence. She gave their names as Ebenezer Owusu, Kwaku Oppong, Patrick Gyamfi and Juliet Boatemaa.

They would be put before court to answer charges of offensive conduct and causing unlawful harm. Mr. Nkrumah profusely rejected, what he described as the lame attempt by the police to cover up the “shameful violence against unarmed civilians”.

 He added that the expectation was that in any civilized society, everybody would get right with the law and that there should be no room for lawlessness and impunity. He said they found it curious “why a chief would need armed police officers and thugs to take him to a community, where he is the ruler, to perform traditional rites” on the sacred day of “Akwasidae”. “We don’t want to believe that the police are paid with the tax-payers money to protect only the rich and the powerful.”

“The injustice – the unfair treatment and fragrant abuse of the rights of the poor – the ordinary people, could not continue”, he stated. Meanwhile, there is uneasy calm in the town with armed policemen deployed to keep law and order.