A 17-year-old boy, Isah Hassan, has been arrested by Kano State Police Command for gouging out the right eye of a 12-year-old boy, Mustapha Yunusa, with a knife, on the demand of an elderly woman, along with N500, for the preparation of a charm.
The charm was to make the teenager disappear at will whenever he would want to.
Hassan was said to have lured the boy, an Almajiri, into a bush, tied his hands and plucked his right eye out.
Also arrested was the second suspect, Furera Abubakar, a grandmother who claimed to be 100 years old.
Confirming this in a statement on Wednesday, March 30, 2022, the command’s Police Public Relations Officer, SP Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa said that the command received information from a resident of Sheka Dantsinke Quarters, Kumbotso Local Government Area, Kano, on March 20, at about 3pm that an unknown person took Yunusa to Rimin Hamza Quarters, Tarauni LGA, used a sharp knife to remove his right eyeball and fled with it to an unknown destination.
The PPRO said: “On receipt of the report, the Commissioner of Police, Kano State Command, Sama’ila Shu’aibu Dikko, raised and instructed a team of Operation Puff Adder, led by the Divisional Police Officer, Sheka Division, CSP Alfa N. Muhammad, to proceed to the scene.
“The team immediately went to the scene and rushed the victim to Murtala Mohammed Specialist Hospital, Kano, where a medical doctor confirmed that the eyeball of the victim was forcefully removed using a sharp object, and the victim was admitted at the said hospital.”
He stated further that as a result of intelligence gathering, Hassan, found to be the principal suspect, was arrested.
The teenage suspect, a resident of Dantsinke layin Rimin Hamza Quarters Tarauni LGA, was picked up with the help of local vigilante of Sheka Quarters on Tuesday, March 29 at about 1am, Kiyawa disclosed.
During interrogation, the suspect had confessed to committing the act.
He revealed that he asked his friend, Sani Abdulrahman, aged 16, about how and where he could get a charm that would make him disappear at will whenever he desired it.
It was then, according to the suspect, that his friend directed him to his grandmother, Furera.
After meeting with the elderly woman, Hassan said that she instructed him to get an eyeball of a human being and bring it to her to prepare the charm for him.
It was in pursuit of this that he lured Yunusa into a nearby bush, tied his hands and forcefully used a sharp knife to pluck his right eyeball out of its socket.
Hassan further stated that after taking eyeball to the woman, she told him to bring N500, but when he did not have the amount, she told him to keep it in a safer place and bring it whenever he had got the money.
This, he said, made him to keep the eyeball for three days, which he later found to have decomposed, resulting in him throwing it away.
The command’s spokesman said that Commissioner of Police had ordered the case to be transferred to the Criminal Investigation Department for further investigation.
He added that the suspects would be charged to court after the conclusion of investigation.
