Bereaved family of a 33-year-old man, who was allegedly arrested by some operatives of the Bauchi Police Command but died in the hospital, has disagreed with police’s claims that he was seen with difficulty in breathing.

The deceased, Dauda Danladi, was allegedly arrested in front of his shop in Yelwa Kagadama, an outskirt of Bauchi metropolis, about 9:00 p.m on Thursday, and was taken to the Yelwa Division, where he was allegedly tortured to death, according to an eyewitness account. One of the deceased’s siblings, Dorathy Danladi, told newsmen that her sister-in-law told her on the phone on Thursday night that her husband had been arrested. She said her mother and her sister-in-law went to the police station in the morning to see him only to be told that my brother had fainted and was in the hospital. “In fact, they have refused to hand over to us his corpse. We want them to hand over his corpse so that we can confirm what they are saying because we know that when they arrested him last night, he was hale and hearty,” she said. An eyewitness, Sheba Babangida, who owns a business shop close to the deceased, said when the police and the vigilante came, they started arresting people from the snooker spot of the deceased, who charged phones in his shop without telling them their crimes. “When they arrested him in front of his shop, we pleaded with them to release him but they refused and forcefully took him into the car they came with, and they were more in number. That was around 9:00 p.m.,” he added. MEANWHILE, the police, in a statement, said the victim did not die in the police custody as widely speculated by some persons who wanted to mislead the public for reasons best known to them. The police spokesman, Ahmed Wakil, in the statement, said the police team, during the course of their operation, received a distress call about a person who had slumped and was gasping for breath. “The police rushed to the scene and met the victim, who was later identified as Dauda ‘m,’ surname yet unknown, lying unconscious and reasonably suspected to be asthmatic under attack and was quickly evacuated by the patrol team to the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH) for medical attention, where he was unfortunately certified dead by a medical doctor. “The Commissioner of Police, CP Abiodun Sylvester Alabi, has ordered for a discreet investigation, including autopsy, to ascertain the actual circumstances surrounding the incident after which the outcome shall be made public,” he added.