Police nab 6 for allegedly burning director-general’s car in Niger

TRACKING>>The police in Niger state have arrested six suspects for allegedly setting ablaze the official vehicle of the Director-General of the state’s Bureau for Religious Affairs, Umar Abdullahi.

Commissioner of Police in the state, Alhaji Adamu Usman, disclosed this in Minna on Monday.

Usman said that on Sunday at about 12: 30 hours, Faruk received information that a group of worshipers in their hundreds had converged at a stream behind Talba Housing Estate along Bida Road supplicating before an indented rock outcrops which they believed had footprints of Prophet Mohammed (SAW).

“The people in their hundreds were drinking and bathing in the polluted stream for medicinal and spiritual fulfilment.

”Consequent upon which the director-general, Bureau for Religious Affairs and four of his staff went to the stream to verify and admonished the crowd against heresy.

”The motley crowd in their hundreds resorted to violence and started stoning the director-general and his men and set his official car ablaze,” he said.

The police boss said the director-general and two of his staff sustained various degrees of injury during the incident, stating that a reinforcement of police patrol teams was mobilised to the scene and they rescued the director-general and his staff, and later took them to Kiro Hospital, Minna, for treatment.

”We have arrested six suspects in connection with the lawless act and the location has been sealed by the police,” he said.