Court jails three students for r*pe in Kwara

A Kwara State High Court, Ilorin, presided over by Justice Adenike Akinpelu, on Monday, convicted three students for conspiring to gang r*pe, and r*pe of a cousin of one of them.

They were found guilty of two counts of criminal conspiracy and r*pe of the victim (name withheld) at the Adangba area in the Ilorin East Local Government Area of the state.

The convicts, Omotosho Yahaya (23), who is the cousin of the victim, Mustapha Ahmed (23) and 22-year-old Mustapha Ridwan, are all students of a tertiary institution in the state.

According to court records, the first defendant (Yahaya) was said to have invited his two friends to join him in the act while with the victim in a room.

Justice Akinpelu sentenced them to five years imprisonment each for rape and two years each for criminal conspiracy.

The judge also imposed an additional N50,000 fine to be paid by each of the defendants.

The sentences are to run concurrently.

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Justice Akinpelu held that “The confessional statements of the defendants are clear, unambiguous and equivocal contrary to the argument of their counsel.

“No woman in her right senses will consent to and allow three men to have s3x with her.”

The judge described the defendants’ claims that the victim owed them money as a “fairy tale” and pronounced them “guilty as charged.”

In her reaction to the judgment, the prosecutor, Muslimat Suleiman, a principal counsel from the Kwara State Ministry of Justice, said the judge did justice to the case having evaluated and exhausted the evidence before her.

Also reacting, the Director, Office of the Public Defender, Ishola Olofere, who defended the first and second defendants, described the judgment as a “good one, though it was against us, looking at the industry exhibited by the judge.”

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