Ritualist Sentenced To Death By Hanging For Killing Two Brother

A ritualist, Ibrahim Mohammed, has been sentenced to death by hanging for killing two brothers in Koto-Nkarfe, Kogi State.

Mohammed was accused of killing two brothers of the same father, Muhammed Kudu Abubakar and Umar Tanko, by first administering poison on them before hitting them on the head with a pestle and then buried their corpses in a shallow grave in his compound.

Delivering judgement, Justice Alaba Omoleye-Ajileye of a high court in Koton-Karfe on Monday said the prosecution had proved its case beyond every reasonable doubt and therefore sentenced Mohammed to death by hanging.

The prosecution had charged the accused persons for offences bordering on robbery and culpable homicide.

The accused persons from whose compound the bodies of the deceased were exhumed during trial had pleaded guilty to the charges.

In his ruling justice Omolaye-Ajileye said, “The facts of robbery in the case flows from established facts and already accepted by the court in respect of the 2nd and 3rd charges.

“With all the pieces of evidence presented by the prosecution: the exhumation of the bodies of Tanko and Mohammed from the compound of the accused person, I hold that after poisoning the two brothers as the accused person confessed in his downright criminality, he hit their heads with pestle to hasten their annihilation.

“And in order to avoid any trace of his brutal and inhuman act, the accused person buried the dead bodies of Tanko and Mohammed in his compound. Unfortunately since nothing is hidden under the sky, nemesis caught up with him,” the judge said.

He added, “By your own word, after poisoning both Tanko and Mohammed and they refused to die, you used a pestle to hit them on their heads. That was a brutal homicide committed with determination and ruthlessness. The manner you committed it, by your own description, makes it a high level of exceptional wickedness that it can only be properly punished by death sentence, which is the only sentence I can pass on you.”