One commercial sex worker simply identified as Chisom has been found dead in controversial circumstances in her room at a hotel (name withheld), in Onitsha, Anambra State.
According to an eyewitness account, the deceased, who hailed from Enugu State was found dead on Monday morning after sweeping her room and washing the plates she used the previous night.
The situation caused the other sex workers in the hotel to start evacuating their belongings from their rooms in a bid to escape the vicinity.
The incident created confusion in the area as residents gathered around the scene of the incident to discuss the matter.
While some suspected that it was a case of murder, others believed the deceased committed suicide.
A source who saw the corpse before it was removed about 2.10 pm, argued that the positioning of the corpse suggested that the deceased was strangulated and could not have possibly committed suicide.
Another source and a colleague of the deceased said that she might have been strangled by an early caller over a financial argument.
She added that the deceased had a disagreement with a caller last week, who allegedly paid her but she refused to give him assess, a situation that led to a serious quarrel and a threat by the caller.
A 70-year-old-woman, living around the hotel, identified as Mama Chizoba, disclosed that the sex workers collected between N5,000 to N7000 depending on the class of callers.
She questioned why the proprietors of the hotel should allow the other girls to evacuate their personal belongings from the hotel when the matter has not been fully investigated.
She dismissed the claims that the deceased hanged herself, saying that all the call girls within the hotel have questions to answer.
According to her, “It is painful that this kind of death will happen in a notorious hotel like this and the proprietors will allow the prostitutes living there to be vacating the hotels in broad daylight with their personal belongings when the corpse of their colleague they claimed hanged herself has not been removed and investigated.
“Why are they running, the proprietors and people are looking at them and they are moving out with their personal belongings, one after the other, and they want us to believe that the girl killed herself. How can somebody who hanged herself be standing with her legs touching the floor?”
Some youths who had the same view about the circumstances of the death of the lady dismissed totally the theory of the call girl hanging herself, saying that nothing could have made her take her life following the nature of the trade she plies, adding that ladies in such trade are strong hearted and can’t think of taking their lives, wondering why she was standing on her feet.
The police from Central Police Station, Onitsha, who visited the scene at 12:30pm, left with some officials of the hotel, who later returned and shortly after, an ambulance from the General Hospital, Onitsha mortuary attendant arrived and took the corpse of the deceased away.
Speaking on the development, the Divisional Police Officer, Central Police Station, Onitsha, Ifeanyi Ibru, said investigations have commenced on the matter.
“We are investigating the matter, the corpse has been taken away,” Ibru added.
