[ 2017-04-03 ]

DSP Gifty Tehoda was deputy Head of the Police Commercial Crimes Unit

My daughter suffered; she was called ‘Coke girl’ – DSP Tehoda
DSP Gifty Mawuenyaga Tehoda, the police officer
who spent 45 days in BNI cells has recounted her
children bore tremendous indignity and ridicule
whilst she was in detention.

According to DSP Tehoda, her children, apart from
being called names, were severely traumatised.
She was arrested, prosecuted and acquitted over
cocaine-exhibit-turned-baking-soda case that
rocked the country in 2011.

Mrs Tehoda said she walked into the offices of the
Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) to answer
questions in relation to cocaine exhibit turning
into baking and unbeknownst to her, she was going
to begin the journey of a long detention and an
equally long drawn out legal battle.

DSP Tehoda, who was Deputy Head of the Police
Commercial Crimes Unit, was subsequently sacked
from the Police Service on August 28, 2012.
After five years legal battle, the Human Rights
Division of the High Court Friday, March 31, 2017,
ordered the Ghana Police Service to reinstate
her.
It further ordered that she should be given her
full salary for the five years that she was on
interdiction, all promotions due her, as well as
damages of 23,000 cedis.

Recounting how the incident affected her family,
DSP Tehoda told Joy FM's Super Morning Show sit-in
host, Nhyira Addo, it was a nightmare she would
never wish for her enemy.

“It was not easy for me but it was only God that
sustained me for all these traumatising periods
and by the grace of God I was able to come out of
it after those terrible days of detention,”
said.

Her daughter was in Class six and family members
had to lie to her that her mother had travelled
outside the country. “I was also crying in the
cells,” Mrs Tehoda recounted.

She added that her son, who was then in Senior
High School, was called “Tagor” (a notorious
drug dealer, according to police) and “even
though he kept complaining, he was coping.”

But her Class six daughter, who was 12, “will
come home, ‘mummy this is how my colleagues have
been calling me, they call me ‘Coke Girl’”.
From news bulletins, the girl's schoolmates
identified her as Mrs Tehoda's daughter “so when
they want to refer to her, they say ‘Coke Girl
come here…’ so the whole day she will be
sad,” she narrated.
Nonetheless, she said the girl pulled through and
“now she is in SHS”.

Source - Myjoyonline.com

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