An FCT High Court in Kubwa, on Wednesday, remanded a 63-year-old man, Alhaji Danladi Sule in a correctional centre for allegedly defiling his seven-year-old foster daughter.
The National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons ( NAPTIP) charged the defendant of Kubwa, Abuja, on three counts bordering on incest.
The defendant pleaded not guilty.
Justice Kezziah Ogbonnaya gave the order pending when the court delivers ruling on the defendant’s bail application made by his defence counsel, Usman Nuhu.
Ogbonnaya however, adjourned the matter until Feb.3 for trial.
Earlier, Nuhu told the court that he filed a motion for bail, dated June 2021 and brought pursuant to Section 162 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act (ACJA) and 36(5) of the 1999 constitution, seeking an order of the court admitting the defendant to bail.
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The defence counsel also told the court that the seven-year-old girl, was in the defendant’s custody following an interim order of foster parenting granted to him by an Abuja Magistrates’ Court in November, 2020.
The prosecution counsel, Rose Ibekwe, told the court that the defence counsel served her with the bail application on Jan.25, 2022, whereas the case filed in June 2021.
Ibekwe added that she filed a five-paragraph counter-affidavit dated Feb.1 and urged the court to discountenance the application for bail, pending when the defendant produced the key witness (the victim).
The prosecution counsel had alleged that the defendant intentionally penetrated the vagina of his 7-year-old foster daughter with his tongue, sometime in 2020.
The offence, she said, is punishable under Section 1(2), 5 (1)of the Violence Against Persons Prohibitions Act, 2015.
