Missing court records: Judge, 5 others quizzed

A retired High Court Judge, Joseph Kpakpo Abrahams, is being investigated with five others from the Kumasi Judicial Service over the disappearance of a Central Processing Unit (CPU), the memory unit of a computer.

According to the Ghanaian Times, the five interdicted judicial personnel who were named by the Kumasi Police as Mercy Odei, Charity Gyekye, Joseph Amo, Aboagye Dacosta and William Boampong reportedly told the Police that the retired judge asked them to take the CPU.

Justice Abrahams retired last August.

The CPU which vanished together with some record books last December from High Court Three in Kumasi is said to contain various judgments and other vital records of the Judicial Service but both the police and the Judicial Service have declined to give details of the case.

The Ashanti Regional Police Commander, Frank Adu-Poku, said at the weekend that the matter was still being investigated, while the regional head of administration of the Judicial Service, Boakye Afari, could only confirm the loss of the items and the interdiction of the five officials pending police investigations.

Many reasons have been assigned to the disappearance of the CPU and other missing items which has stalled many cases at the court with litigants finding themselves in a dilemma, but it is believed that they might contain controversial judgments.

Some litigant wishing to remain anonymous expressed similar sentiments and added that the loss of the items was not a surprise because many files had gone missing at random from the courts.

Electronic recording of court proceedings was introduced in 2000 to speed up trial of cases pending before some of the courts because manual recording of proceedings caused delays and stalled large numbers of cases in the system.

Source: The Ghanaian Times