Court discharges woman accused of flogging own father to death

An Akwa-Ibom State High Court in Abak has discharged one Mrs Glory Dan, who was accused of killing her father.

Justice Edem Akpan said there was no proof by the prosecution that the accused used a lethal weapon to inflict injury on the deceased, adding that the prosecution failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.

Delivering judgment in the suit, Justice Akpan said, “I do not believe the attempt of the prosecution to infer that the cane the accused person collected from the deceased and used on him in retaliation caused the death of the deceased.

“A more useful medical evidence would not only have unequivocally established the cause of death but may have provided the necessary nexus between the death of the victim and the act of the accused.

“Therefore the issues of determination are resolved in favour of the defense. Accordingly, the case is dismissed,” he said.

Glory was alleged to have confronted her father, Bassey Dan, from Mbiakpan Atan village in Ibiono Ibom Local Government Area, Akwa Ibom State for being the cause of for her marital problems.

She allegedly attacked her father because it was revealed to her in a dream by her late mother that her father was the one behind the death of her two husbands.

In the statement, she allegedly gave to the police at the Homicide section of the State Criminal Investigation department, Glory stated that she visited her father and requested that he opened the door for her but that he refused.

She explained that she forcefully gained access into the house through the window and sought to know why he was silent about her marital sufferings.

She said rather than respond to the question, her father pulled a cane he kept behind the door and flogged her with it.

She said she snatched the cane from him and beat him twice before running out of the room, and that he chased after her and fell at her mother’s grave.

She claimed that as at the time she collected the cane to flog her father in retaliation and left his compound, the deceased was not dead.

The Investigating Police Officer (IPO) in charge of the case, Inspector Gabriel Sunday, in his evidence, told the court that when he visited the scene, there was evidence of dried blood in the room.

The police however failed to conduct an autopsy on the deceased to determine the cause of death, and of the three witnesses called by the prosecution to testify in court, none was an eye witness to the incidence.