Parents Who Accused Son Of Witchcraft Locked Him Up For 3-Years

The Mankessim Divisional Police are investigating a case where a 52-year old man and his wife have confined to a room a paralysed and sickly 16-year-old JHS boy for three years on the grounds that he is a wizard.

The boy, Samuel Kofi Ntsiful, who says he dreams of becoming a pilot, dropped out of his school, the Edumadze Junior High School at Mankessim.

He has what is considered a strange skin disease that gives a poignant smell, for which reason he has been caged in a very dirty small room.

Located at New Nkusukum, a suburb of Mankessim in the Mfantseman Municipality of the Central Region, the boy is fed with unwholesome meals as a punishment by his biological father and the step-mother.

Speaking to Citi News on the matter, the Mankessim Divisional Commander of Police, ACP Owuahene Adjei Acheampong, explained that the boy has been abandoned by the household while his siblings have been brainwashed to dissociate themselves from him.

Describing the appalling state of the boy, the Divisional Commander said the boy was being treated as an animal at the time the police got to his confined room on Wednesday upon a tipoff.

“He has been abandoned and even if there is food to be given to him, it is thrown to him like a dog; nobody wants to get close to him (because of the bad smell and the witchcraft tag on him). He is very pale”, ACP Acheampong said.

ACP Acheampong further explained that both the father and the step-mother of the boy hold the belief that since a similar skin disease killed the boy's mother and the mother was suspected to be a witch, the late mother transferred her witchcraft to the boy.

“There were some rashes that came over the woman (the late mother) and because of that she died and the rashes have been transferred to the boy, and once it has come over him, the boy too is a wizard and he’s causing him (the father) not to prosper”, the Divisional Commander narrated.

He said the parents, Amos Ntsiful and Agnes Akweesi, have been cautioned and discharged, and are being investigated for neglect of parental duties and responsibilities.

The boy was picked up on Thursday by the Mfantseman Municipal Social Welfare Department and is currently at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital for treatment.