Three bags of life imprisonment for raping a deaf woman

“The accused broke into the victim’s house while she was sleeping and forcibly had sexual intercourse with her.

“They had strangled her with a thick piece of cloth and tied both her hands with a rope before having sexual intercourse with her one after the other,” she said.

The lawyer prayed the court to convict the defendants as charged because the law provides for mandatory punishment. She said criminal conspiracy and rape are offences punishable under sections 259 and 60 of the Kebbi State Penal Code Law, 2021.

The prosecution had previously called three witnesses and presented six exhibits containing statements from the three prosecution witnesses in both English and Hausa to support its case.

Defence counsel Ahmed Abubakar-Filgila called on the three convicts to give their testimony and testify in their defence without producing any document or piece of evidence. The defence counsel asked the court to temper justice with mercy.

In his verdict, Judge Jafar said the prosecution had established all evidence of sexual intercourse with the victim (name withheld).

He said she did so based on the joint testimony of the victim and the first defendant and concluded that the defense had not refuted their evidence.

“I am firmly convinced that all defendants were involved in the commission of the crime.

“In the meantime, the convicts hatched a plot and raped the victim, an 18-year-old deaf married woman, in her husband’s apartment.

“The prosecution has demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt all the necessary elements to prove a criminal conspiracy to commit rape.

“The court has no choice but to act on the basis of the evidence before it,” he said.

The judge similarly said that the court was of the opinion that it had found the first, second and third defendants guilty as charged.