OWUSU v. PONKO

The facts of this case are quite simple. Owusu, the plaintiff, is a teacher in the small township of Akim Ntronang. Nana Ponko, the defendant, is the odikro of the town. Towards the evening of 28 June 1973, the plaintiff's nephew, Yaw Tanoh, stole a matchet from the shop of one Somuah. The matchet itself was recovered shortly afterwards. A boy, who was with Tanoh at the time, informed Somuah about what Tanoh had done. Somuah went to Tanoh's house and confronted him with the charge. The plaintiff was at that house at the time and he advised Tanoh to return the matchet. Tanoh did so. According to Somuah, the plaintiff also asked him to drop the matter at that stage. Somuah refused and reported the matter to the police.

Somuah said he declined to drop the matter because that very morning, the defendant had caused gong gong to be beaten through the town asking anyone who caught a thief to report to him so that he might deal with the matter. On the way to report this theft to the police, therefore, Somuah passed by the defendant's residence and reported the matter to him.

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Both the plaintiff and the defendant agree that the defendant had formed a committee that day to help check stealing which was thought to have become rampant in the town. Both the plaintiff and the defendant were members of this committee, with the defendant, of course, as its chairman. It was a noble cause for private citizens to sponsor. But just because of that very reason, it was absolutely necessary that these public spirited citizens should exercise great care in what they did if innocent persons were not to be injured by their acts.

In this country recognition is given to the fact that uncontrolled powers of interference with others in the name of the suppression of crime hold grave dangers to the people generally, for the State makes the police the primary instrument for the investigation of crime and invests them with greater, albeit also limited, powers of arrest and search than what it gives to the ordinary citizen. The feared danger of unlawful and unwarranted interference was realised, if in a minor form, on the day our particular case is concerned with.

Upon Somuah making his report to the police, the inspector-in-charge of the police station detailed a corporal and two policemen to accompany Somuah to arrest Tanoh. There was no suggestion that Tanoh was of violent tendencies or was likely to resist arrest. If one may judge from his conduct in returning the matchet