A police report has cleared the mystery surrounding a baby’s missing ear at the Victory Children’s Hospital, Onitsha, Anambra State.

The report, which was sighted by PUNCH on Sunday, exonerated the hospital and its workers from blame.

The parents of the baby had in 2015, when the incident happened, accused the hospital management and staff of chopping off their child’s ear for ritual purposes.

This resulted in a series of arrests of the hospital staffs.

But the report by the office of the Inspector-General of Police stated that rats actually ate the baby’s ear at the hospital.

The report read in part, “This deals with a case of alleged mutilation of a newborn baby girl’s ear reported to the Inspector-General of Police by Mr. Solomon Igwe against Dr. Oliver Umeh, the owner, and staff of the Victory Children’s Hospital, Onitsha.

“On July 30, 2015, around 7.30am, Solomon Igwe, upon unwrapping the corpse, discovered that the right ear of the baby had been severed from the body.

“He reported to the Central Police Station, Onitsha, where he accused Dr. Oliver Umeh as being responsible for the missing ear.

“While the investigation was ongoing, Dr. Oliver Nnamdi felt dissatisfied with the police arrest and detention, and from one level of investigation to another as he was neither at the hospital during the admission/treatment and the death of the said baby hence, he petitioned the Inspector-General of Police.

“The said petition was subsequently forwarded to the Commissioner of Police, Homicide Section, for harmonization and consolidation. While the investigation was ongoing, the parents made a demand for the sum of N10m for Dr. Oliver Umeh to be vindicated, but he sensed a foul play and an attempt to extort and blackmail him using the then investigating team.

“Consequently, he wrote a counter-petition to the Deputy Inspector-General of Police, urging the transfer of the case to Abuja for an unbiased investigation.

“In the course of the investigation, statements of parties to the case were recorded and the scene of the crime was visited. Detectives also viewed the corpse of the deceased baby. An autopsy was conducted on the remains of the deceased baby, but the parents contested the outcome.”

The report added that police investigation revealed that the parents capitalized on the discovered severed ear and became suspicious of the cause of death.

It further stated that both the first and second post-mortem examinations conducted on the insistence of the father of the deceased baby revealed that the ear was apparently removed by rodents, hence the serrated edges of the defect left behind. Histology also shows that the defect arose after death.

An Aircraftman of the Nigerian Air Force, Bashir Umar, has returned the sum of €37,000 found in a parcel at the Hajj Camp Market in Kano State to the owner.

Umar, who is a member of the NAF Mobile Air Defence Team deployed for airport security duties, found the parcel on Tuesday during a routine patrol with some of his colleagues, according to the air force in a statement on Sunday.

The Aircraftman, however, returned the money, which was said to belong to one Alhaji Ahmad, after calling a phone number he found on the parcel.

The NAF Director of Public Relations and Information, Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, said the Chief of the Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar, had directed the NAF Chief of Administration to “immediately come up with modalities to reward the airman.”

Daramola said, “The air force is set to reward one of its personnel, Aircraftman Bashir Umar, who found and returned the sum of €37,000 to Alhaji Ahmad, the owner of the lost money.

“The incident occurred at the Hajj Camp Market in Kano on Tuesday, when Bashir, while on a routine patrol with some of his colleagues, found the money in a parcel. Fortunately, there was a phone number on the parcel, which the airman called, and he eventually handed over the package to the owner.

“Consequently, the Chief of Air Staff has directed the Chief of Administration at the NAF Headquarters, Air Marshal Kingsley Lar, to immediately come up with modalities to reward the airman so as to encourage other personnel of the service to continue with attitudes that reflect the air force’s core values of integrity, excellence and service delivery.”