The Kogi State High Court sitting in Koton-Karfi on Monday sentenced a man, Mallam Ibrahim Muhammed, to death for killing two brothers.
The accused, who was arraigned for robbery and culpable homicide, is to die by hanging for killing Mohammed Kudu Abubakar and Umar Tanko Abubakar.
According to the Police First Information Report (FIR), the accused in January last year, at Kungbani Village, Kogi local government area of the state, robbed Tanko Abubakar and his brother Ibrahim Mohammed of their Toyota Carina E wagon marked BDA 902 AA, thereby committed an offence punishable under section 298(a) of the penal code.
The accused was also said to have poisoned the two brothers, before killing them, by hitting them in the head with a pestle when the poison failed to react quickly, thereby committing an offence punishable under section 221(a) of the penal code.
The accused, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The presiding judge, Hon. Justice Alaba Omolaye-Ajileye, while delivering his judgment said: “I hold that after poisoning the two brothers as the accused confessed, in his downright criminality, he hit their heads with pestle (exhibit P7) to hasten their annihilation. And, in order to avoid any trace of his brutal and inhuman act, the accused buried the dead bodies of Tanko and Mohammed in his compound.
“Unfortunate for him, since nothing is hidden under the sky, nemesis caught up with him. By the application of an unusual but most excellent investigatory dexterity, the Special Anti-Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force, Kogi State, exposed the apparently hidden crime.
“By your own word, after poisoning both Tanko and Mohammed and they refused to die, you used a pestle to hit them in their heads. That was a brutal homicide committed with determination and ruthlessness. The manner you committed it, by your own description, make it a high level of exceptional wickedness, that it can only be properly marked by death sentence, which is the only sentence I can pass on you.”
The judge therefore sentenced the accused to death by hanging.