The police command in Ogun has arrested a suspected member of a ritualist syndicate which allegedly killed and dismembered one Oyindamola Adeyemi at Ijebu-Ode on January 28.

The command’s public relations officer, Abimbola Oyeyemi, confirmed this in a statement issued in Abeokuta on Sunday.

Mr Oyeyemi said the suspect was arrested on Friday in the Ijade-Iloti area of Ijebu-Ode.

He said the suspect offered the police officers who arrested him a N1 million bribe, which was rejected.

Mr Oyeyemi said other members of the gang had earlier been arrested.

He further stated that the suspect was apprehended following a painstaking intelligence-based investigation by detectives from the Obalende Divisional Headquarters, which led them to his hideout.

“The suspect, who had been indicted by the earlier arrested members of the syndicate as the person who bought the two legs of the victim, took to flight immediately after he heard that he had been mentioned by his colleagues.

“Since then, the DPO, Obalende division, Murphy Salami, has detailed his detectives to be on his trail with a view to arresting him and possibly recovering the deceased’s two legs from him and prosecuting him with his colleagues-in-crime.

“Luck, however, ran against him when he was apprehended at his Ijade-Iloti hideout on April 28,” he said.

Mr Oyeyemi added that the suspect had confessed to being part of the syndicate that killed the victim and that he was the person who severed the two legs of the deceased, which he claimed he used for ritual purposes.

The Commissioner of Police, Olanrewaju Oladimeji, had directed that the suspect be transferred to the State Criminal Investigations Department to prosecute him with other syndicate members. 

(NAN)