By ARMSTRONG ALLAHMAGANI, Bauchi –
Musa Hamza, a resident of Alkaleri Local Government Area of Bauchi State, has been sentenced to death by hanging by a High Court number 10 sitting in the state for killing his friend.
The presiding Judge, Justice Faruq Sarki, found the man guilty that he killed his teenage friend, sliced his throat and removed his eyes. He put the eyes in a bottle and later buried his head, and body in different places.
Lawyers from the Bauchi State Ministry of Justice, Mohammed Ibrahim, Salihu Haruna and Ali Yusuf, who filed a case against the suspect accused him of murder, pointing out that the punishment was death according to section 221 of the penal code.
The prosecutors told the court that: “the suspect, lured his 17-year-old friend, Adamu Ibrahim. He then used a stick and hit him with it and removed his head and two eyes and thereafter, buried his head and his body in different places”.
The suspect who initially denied the charges leveled against him before the court later admitted to committing the offense.
The prosecutors, in their bid to prove their case, presented six witnesses while the defense presented one witness – the accused person.
The witnesses said that the boy’s father brought a complaint that his son did not return home, but he got information that he was seen with the accused after they went out with one other person at night and ate dinner together.
The other person told the court that on that fateful day, he left the accused with the deceased together. But when the suspect was asked, he claimed that he also left him.
However, when the Police arrested and searched him, they found the deceased’s phone with the sim card in his (suspect’s) possession.
The investigation continued and he later confessed to the crime leveled against him, and explained that he took the deceased to a forest and killed him there; adding that he removed his head and plucked out his eyes.
The suspect then took the Police to where the body of the deceased was buried.
When he was asked where the eyes were, he said he left them in his house in a bottle. Police went and recovered the eyes and exhumed the body and took it to the Alkaleri General Hospital where a medical Doctor certified him dead.
All efforts made by counsel of the accused, Mahmud Maidoki, to defend the accused were unsuccessful.
The Presiding Judge, Justice Sarki, while delivering his judgement, said that based on the statements of the witnesses and confessional statement of the accused, the court found that he (the accused) committed the crime of murder and was murder with intent.
He also refused to agree to his request for leniency sought by the defense counsel and therefore, sentenced the accused to death by hanging based on section 273 and 221 of the Penal code law to serve as a deterrent to others.
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