The Asawase Police in Kumasi are alleged to have beaten up rioting students, inflicting serious wounds on some. Narrating his horrific ordeal at the hands of the police, one of the victims who had to receive medical treatment alleged that he and fourteen others were given twenty pitiless lashes each while in police custody for 30 hours. Philip Owusu Ansah alleges that but for the intervention of his grandfather who is the Ashanti Regional Minister, E.A. Owusu Ansah, he and his colleagues were to languish in the cells much longer. Philip, a student of the Kings College said the police arrested him and the others on Monday, three days after riots broke out between students of Kings College and Garden City Secondary during a football match at the weekend. He alleged that the police claimed that students of the College had harassed female students of the Garden City Secondary. Philip said the police arrived in two vehicles and arrested five students from Kings College and 10 from Garden City. “I did not struggle with them. When they caught me one of the officers came from my back and used a cutlass that he picked on the floor to hit me…They said ‘it is do before complaint’ and some were using belts and canes on us.” But the Asawase District Police Commander Paul Ayitey has denied the allegation that his men beat up the students. He said the police has the power to use minimum force to achieve results and supposed that was what might have happened. “Nobody assaulted any student and perhaps the wounds that they have may be the result of their own rioting.” He also denied knowledge of the students being beaten up in the custody of the police but admitted the arrest also of the assistant headmaster, the proprietor and sports teacher of Kings College to assist in investigation.