The Chief Judge of Katsina State Justice Musa Danladi Abubakar has described the police as weak and unprepared in investigating criminal cases before charging them to court.
He said such delays result in the quick release of the criminals before their proper trials in court.
Abubakar spoke in a media chat with The Nation in his office on Tuesday.
He blamed police for the release of bandits undergoing trials, insisting the courts have no fault at all.
According to him: ”It’s not the court that is releasing the bandits but because no credible evidence from the police is brought forward before the courts’’,
‘’Police don’t do their homework, they don’t come ready when they come to court unlike other agencies like EFCC, ICPC, who when they come to courts, they come ready, prepared and have all their evidence with their investigations completed.
‘’The Police don’t have the resources, they have something inherent in them, they lack personnel and where they do have, they misplace priority. They treat every criminal case the same with arrest and detention. This is the quagmire we are in’’.
He added: ”In the last three months, the Ministry of Justice has cleared over 300 cases and advised the police to either prosecute or discharge the suspects because there’s no credible evidence against them’’.
Read Also: Police rescue kidnapped PDP House of Assembly candidate, others in Katsina
The Chief Judge expressed worries over the challenges confronting the judicial system in Katsina, especially the congestion of correctional facilities, the inability of the judicial arm to prosecute convicts and delay tactics by suspects.
He also attributed the frequent release of convicts on bails to their length of incarceration for several years with the files containing the nature of their crimes and locations not traced while they found their way to the prisons
He said: ’’The courts work on evidence. If there’s evidence which is doubtful or there is no evidence at all, the court will discharge them because it’s the law that said so.
‘’In the past, the system was working very well. The offences were not as grievous as they were today, there is a population explosion while the facilities in the justice sector remain the same.”