By Ibrahim Abdul’Aziz, Regional Correspondent
The state High Court VII presided over by Justice Fatima Ahmed Tafida, on Wednesday convicted Bappa for causing the death of his son by hitting him with a rearing stick and cutting off his head with a cutlass.
Reports say that the convict was tricked by some suspected ritualists (now at large) to kill his own son in order to make money for him, the devilish idea which he consented to and started planning on how to carry out the act.
The convict and his son, late Buba went to the bush on 13th July, 2013 to rear his cattle unknown to the son that his father was nursing an evil plan to kill him.
To carry out the evil plan, Bappa was said to have used a stick and hit his son as a result of which the deceased fell on the ground, and later used his cutlass and cut off the head of the boy leaving him lifeless.
When the convict came back home in the evening of the fateful day, he enquired from his wife whether the late son whom he claimed to have sent to the farm had returned.
But his wife told him that the boy was yet to come back home, a situation which caused confusion and tension in the family, leading to a collective decision to launch a search in the bush.
To trace the whereabouts of the victim, the convict in company of his brothers mobilised the community and went into the bush in search for the deceased the first day but to no avail, and decided to continue with the search the next day.
It was during the second round of search that the lifeless body of the young man was found without the head.
The search team then became suspicious of the father and decided to apprehend him. It was at this juncture that the matter was reported to the Gombi Divisional Police headquarters who promptly arrested him and launched an investigation into the matter.
The case was later referred to the Criminal Investigation Department Yola, for further investigation where the suspect and now convict confessed to having committed the offence.
In the course of investigation, the convict led the investigative team of CID to the scene of the incident and where he buried the head, and was exhumed by the police which was tendered in evidence.
The suspect and now convict was earlier arraigned before court for culpable homicide punishable with death contrary to section 221 of the penal code law.
After evaluating all the evidences which include the severed head of the deceased, the cutlass used to cut off the head, and voluntary confessional statement of the accused, the presiding Judge declared that without iota of doubt, the suspect actually masterminded the killing of his son thereby committing an offence contrary to section 221 of the penal code law and therefore sentenced him to death by hanging.
Justice Fatima Ahmed Tafida, stated that the prosecution has proved beyond reasonable doubt that the death had occurred, and it was the defendant that caused his son’s death by hitting him and subsequently beheading the deceased with a cutlass.
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