A 42-year-old man, Muhammad Haruna, has been sentenced to death by hangingby a Minna High Court sitting in Niger State after he was found guilty of murdering a 12-year-old boy identified as Shamsudeen, in a bush at Kagara, the headquarters of Rafi Local Government Area of the state.
The sentence was handed down on Haruna by Justice Aisha Bawa Bwari, in the case that had dragged for over four years.
While delivering her judgment, Justice Bwari noted that the court had examined all the issues surrounding the circumstances of the case and found out that the proper evidence arrived at, had shown, without any iota of doubt, that the accused person and no one else caused the death of the deceased.
Justice added that the circumstantial evidence adduced by the prosecution was convincing.
“It is in the light of the foregoing that the court finds the first accused, Muhammad Haruna, guilty of the offence of culpable homicide punishable under Section 221. You are to be hanged by the neck until you are dead,” Justice Bwari passed.
Justice Aisha Bwari, however, discharged a second accused in the case, Musa Ahmadu, for want of enough evidence for his conviction.
In the convict’s confessional statement tendered in court by the prosecution, Muhammad Harunasaid he was hired by a ritualist,Malam Musa Yakila, to bring a human part for N2 million. Yakila, according to the statement, wanted to send the human parts to his customers in Yola, Adamawa State. It was after the agreement was struck that he, Haruna, lured the deceased into Shambua forest where he hit him with a stick resulting in his death.
