By Adama Ceesay
Personnel of the Gambia Police Force have arrested seven (7) people three of whom were found sleeping at the village ‘Bantaba’.
These men were found sleeping at the ‘Bantaba’ on Tuesday night owing to the hot weather condition. For communities like Jarumeh Koto, people sleep at the Bantaba when the weather is hot. The arrestees were found sleeping and the police asked them to wake up. They took them to the Kuntaur Police Station where they were detained for a night. They were granted bail.
The arrestees told Foroyaa that they were put in a single cell without any facemasks.
“I usually sleep at the ‘Bantaba’. I was not moving around. The ‘Bantaba’ is like home here,” one of them told Foroyaa.
“If the weather is hot, people come here to spend the night and this was what we did,” an elderly among them said.
“The condition of the cell we were put in was very bad. It was smelly and there were mosquitoes. We were all using the same container to urinate and defecate,” one of them said.
“We have facemasks. We cannot sleep with our facemasks and this was why we left them in our rooms,” one of them said.
There is an ongoing curfew in the Gambia requiring every person to be at home between the hours 10 pm and 5 am every day for 21 days. The police have so far arrested over two hundred people for violating the curfew order.
The three other arrestees were shopkeepers. One was apprehended in the street walking.
