Pandemonium broke out in the neighbourhood at Kabayi in Mararaba, a suburb of Abuja recently as a man said to be in his early 30s and a woman in her late 30s believed to be his wife, narrowly escaped lynching by an angry mob for brutally beating a girl of about 10 years, who they brought from a village in Abia State to stay with them.
Investigations revealed that the man, who is an artist, allegedly beat the victim, an orphan, with a cable under the supervision of his wife, who is a trader, and the minor sustained various degrees of injury all over her body.
Findings showed that the duo after thoroughly beating the victim, tried to conceal the crime by locking the girl in their room and both of them left the house.
But unknown to the suspected conspirators, one of their neghbours, Mr. Cornilius Ude, who was monitoring their criminal activity right from when the beating started around 11p.m. that fateful day till the wee hours of the following day, exposed them.
The neighbour told our reporter that all efforts to get the couple open their door for the girl to be rescued failed in the night, but in the morning, the victim spotted him through the kitchen window and beckoned for help.
He said when the victim showed him the injuries on her body, he quickly alerted the landlady, who came to the house with her husband around 9a.m. and called the couple to come and open the door for the girl to be treated.
“Even when the landlady and the landlord arrived, the girl couldn’t get help immediately as the suspects came home, opened the door and started beating the victim afresh,” Mr. Ude told City News.
The situation then took a dangerous dimension when an irate mob that gathered at the scene and witnessed the fresh brutality, attacked the suspects and rescued the girl from the suspects’ ‘cell’.
Eyewitnesses said the couple, who locked themselves in their room, was forced out by the mob which booed at the suspects, while hurling stones and other objects at them.
The mob was, however, stopped from further attacking the couple when a concerned resident called the police as the situation worsened, and a team of detectives from the JWC Department of the ‘A’ Division Police Station Mararaba came and arrested the man and the woman.
At the police station, a source who would not want to be named, confirmed the incident and said that the suspects have been charged with criminal conspiracy, causing grievous hurt and cruelty to children at a court at Mararaba.
He advised parents not to handover their children to relations or persons, whose character is not well known to them.
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