Justice Adenike Akinpelu of the Kwara State High Court on Monday sentenced three students to five years in prison each for conspiring and gang raping a cousin of one of them.
The court found them guilty on a two-count charge of criminal conspiracy and rape of the at the Adangba area of Ilọrin.
The defendants (Omotosho Yahaya, 23, cousin of the victim) was said to have invited his two friends, Mustapha Ahmed (23) and Mustapha Ridwan (22), all students of a tertiary institution, to join him in the act while the victim was in his room.
They were sentenced to five years imprisonment for rape and two years for criminal conspiracy each and the sentences included a N50,000 fine each.
Justice Akinpelu held that, “The confessional statements of the defendants are clear, unambiguous and equivocal contrary to the argument of their counsel.
“The contents of the statement of the defendant are consistent with other evidence before the court.
“No woman in her right senses will consent to and allow three men to have sex with her.
“Exhibit 1 (a plank) recovered from the scene of crime attested to the fact that the victim was threatened and raped, coupled with other tests from a government hospital conducted on her.”
Though desirable, Akinpelu noted that, “It is not in all cases that the absence of the victim in court due to certain circumstances can be relied upon to argue a case.”
She further said, “It is bad enough that the convicts at their age will gang rape the victim, it is equally worse for them to be left scot free.”
She described their “claims that she owed them money as a fairy tale” and pronounced them “guilty as charged”.
Responding to the judgement, the prosecutor, Muslimat Suleiman, a principal counsel from the Kwara State Ministry of Justice, said the judge had done justice to the case having evaluated all the evidence before her.
On his part, the Director, Office of the Public Defender, Ishola Saka Olofere, who defended the first and second defendants, described the judgement as a “good one even though it was against us looking at the industry exhibited by the judge.
“We pleaded with the court to be lenient since the convicts are still young with aged parents and first offenders.”
