Heartless: Read What Police Officers Did To Their Dead Colleagues

Three police officers have been apprehended by the Lagos state police command for allegedly falsely collecting the insurance claims of their dead colleagues.

insurance section of police department. Photo Credit: The Punch

The Punch reports that the three officers – an assistant superintendent of police, a female inspector and a corporal – received claims running into millions of Naira from the force belonging to families of dead police officers. They also forged non-existent names of officers to swindle the force.

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The officers were arrested on Monday, November 10 after police authorities received a petition that families of some dead policemen had yet to get the claims.

A police source said: “The policemen are attached to the insurance section, and they are in charge of handling the claims and gratuities of deceased officers. They were arrested about two weeks ago. What happened was that they defrauded the police by collecting money on behalf of non-existent and dead policemen.

“Their mode of operation is to cook up names of policemen, claim that the policemen are dead, and then collect their claims. The money runs into millions. They are currently in the cell, and they are going to face an orderly room trial.

“It was when a petition got to the command that investigation began into the matter. We went to some divisions where the three officers claimed policemen had died and had collected gratuities for them, but we discovered that there were no such names.

“We also discovered that the families of some dead policemen, whose claims had been paid by the police, had not got their claims. That was how the three were arrested. The total sum of the fraud is not known, but if each insured policeman gets about N500,000, then the amount runs into millions.”

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Joe Offor, the spokesperson of the state police command confirmed the incident but declined to give the names of the suspects.

He said: “Some police officers were arrested on an allegation of fraud. The fraud borders on tampering with records of deceased members of the Force. We have some families of deceased policemen whose families said they died as far back as 2013, and the families had not got their entitlements. There could still be others involved. But investigation is ongoing into the matter.”

In a related development, a police sergeant was locked up in a cell of the X-Squad section of the Lagos state police command after allegedly selling a week old baby who was brought to the station with his mother.

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