A private legal practitioner, David Adu Tutu Junior has questioned the Ashanti Regional Police command to clarify the reasons why some 34 students from University of Cape Coast (UCC) were arrested and still detained in order to quell ensuing protests.

These 34 students from UCC were arrested last Saturday, 29th February, at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi and are purportedly still in police custody.

The lawyer asserted that, in spite of the fact that KNUST has been pronounced a “security zone” the police will have to give tangible reasons why the students were arrested and “treated badly” without any charges pressed.

“It is wrong how they were treated and how they were arrested. Maybe they were taken away because of the security zone issue [at KNUST]. However, the Ashanti Regional Command will have to spell out the reasons for going to detain them in the first place, and secondly, why they were treated the way they were treated?”

He added that, since the students have been kept in custody for this long, “the police should have a reason that a crime was about to be committed, or a crime was being committed. Whatever crime that they are considering we need to know”

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Lawyer Tutu Jr. in an interview on Rainbow Radio on Monday, March 2, 2020 also hinted at the possibility that the 34 student detainees have overstayed their detention period as spelt out by the law.

The lawyer however noted that, the reports emerging on the issue are one-sided, making it difficult to give a fair opinion on the matter. Therefore the need for the police to officially clarify the happenings on last Saturday.

“We need answers from the police, and we need official answers, because some of these things, when you rendering a general opinion, it looks like you are taking sides… [So] I can’t give a definite opinion based on one side of the story.”

In protest to the police’s action, a vibrant student group in UCC- the Economic Fighter league, has demanded the immediate release and compensation of the detained students.

They asserted that the students were unlawfully arrested on Saturday since they were not armed and the arrest was effected without any charges pressed.

In a statement released on Monday by the group’s leader, Kofi Fidel, they threatened to take action upon the police refusal to release the detained students as soon as possible.