Man Released After Spending 7 Years In Prison After Wrongfully Accused Of Raping His Stepdaughter

Barr Abubakar Zain Post "HE GOT HIS FREEDOM AFTER 7 YEARS IN PRSION. The Man you see in this picture has spent 7 years in prison waiting for his fate, his name is Jonathan and he was wrongly accused to have raped his stepdaughter simply because someone was not in good terms with him. Jonathan was born and brought up in Nasarawa/Kakuri, Kaduna and has spent most of life around that Area, he was a true Kakuri boy, rugged and stubborn. In April, 2019. Jonathan was framed that he had raped his stepdaughter, he was arrested by vigilante, maltreated and later on handed over to the police in Kakuri, and from there they transferred him to state SCID and subsequently remanded in Kaduna Prison on cognizance, pending advice from Ministry of Justice. Unfortunately for him, his mother was an aged woman and needed someone to take care for talk more of standing by his side and get him out of trouble, his only brother was a soldier and could have saved him from humiliation but was too far, he was serving in Lagos and before he could hear the news, it was already too late, Jonathan was already in Prison. He spent about 4 years going to magistrate without any result, any time he goes to court he will hear the prosecutor saying “We have forwarded the case diary to the Ministry of justice and are waiting for legal advice” to the extent that he memorized it and going to magistrate court became a boring routine but he was always waiting for the new date with the hope that one day the advice will come and he will be released since he was innocent, that was how his life been from May 2019 and sometimes around August 2022 I came across him in Court and decided to help him Pro-Bono. First, I obtained the FIR from Court and visited him in Prison for proper briefing and interview, then I filed a bail application on his behalf relying on sections 34, 35 and 36 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended) and section 174 (1) and (2) of Kaduna Administration of Criminal Justice Law 2017 which provided that a person can be granted bail on capital offences under exceptional circumstances. I served the necessary parties with my bail application but on the day that I was supposed to move the Bail Application sometimes in December, 2022 a counsel from MOJ filed a counter affidavit and served me in Court, I had no option than to take a new date for reply, and the case was adjourned to January, 2023. On the next adjourned date the Counsel from MOJ filed charge against him and the case changed shape, the charge was mention and he pleaded not guilty but since it’s a capital offence he cannot be granted bail. The case was adjourned for hearing but there was no one to testify, the IPO was transferred from Kaduna, the alleged victim was nowhere to be found, the grandmother that reported the case to police has left Kaduna and just like that the case went on for more than a year with no progress whatsoever, 2023 has finished and nothing was coming from the prosecution, we entered 2024 and the same story, every time we go to court the prosecution counsel will plead with the Court for another date. I approached the Counsel that since there is no witness available to testify let her withdraw the case and anytime her witnesses become available she can refile, and also called her attention that the Defendant’s health is not normal and he needs to get medical attention but she wasn’t taking it, she however suggested that we do plea bargain wherein the Defendant will plead guilty to a lesser offense and he will be convicted accordingly and from there he can gain his freedom, I refused that because I know that he will be discharged and acquitted because first, he was innocent and secondly, they don’t have any evidence to prove the case against him, and before we could do anything 2024 has gone and we entered 2025. When I realized that the Defendant’s health situation was getting worse and the prosecution counsel is not helping matter, I changed my approach and agreed to the plea bargain, but that one requires long process. I had to write a formal application and the plea bargain committee was to sit and determine that and before that could be done we were at June, 2025 and finally the plea bargain was approved. We thought that our efforts had finally yielded the desired result, but we were far from that, there’s still a long way to go. Now, among the condition of the plea bargain terms was that the victim must be restituted and compensated but she was nowhere to be found, we were told that that she was in Sabo Tasha, we sent someone there and for weeks, we didn’t get a good news about her, we then attempted to get the grandmother and were told that she had returned to Nasarawa State and the village she’s in is very remote to the extent that there’s no network coverage, but there is no way we can go on with the terms without any of them because there must a signature of the victim or her parent in addition to the restitution. We went to court and picked a date in Jul

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