A 12-year-old Almajiri boy, on Wednesday, lost his right eye after a 17-year-old boy, Isa Hassan, forcefully plucked it out, as an ingredient needed for the preparation of a disappearing charm.
The incident occurred at Sheka Quarters, Kumbotso Local Government Area of Kano after the 17-year-old boy lured his victim to a nearby bush, where he tied him standing upright and plucked out his right eye, with a sharp knife, and abandoned him to bleed to death.
Explaining the circumstances behind his action, the suspect said he desperately needed the charm to overpower bandits, who often terrorize him and his friends in the Bauchi State forest each time they are searching for charcoal, which they produce by felling and burning trees in the forest.
According to him, my friend Sani Abdulraham hinted me that his grandmother, (107-year-old) Furaira Abubakar, a herbalist can help me prepare the charm to make me invisible to the gunmen terrorising us in the forest.
Thereafter, he said, the old woman asked him to produce a human eye, as an ingredient to prepare the charm for him.
However, Furaira, while speaking to newsmen at the Kano Police Command Headquarters in Bompai, denied having any knowledge to prepare disappearing charms.
She admitted that she is an herbalist, who assists people, with herbs but does not engage in producing disappearing charms.
While confirming the incident, the spokesman of the Command, Abdullahi Haruna Kiyawa, said shortly after the police received the disturbing report, the Commissioner of Police, Sama’ila Shu’aibu Dikko, raised a team that rushed the victim to the hospital, where a medical doctor confirmed that his left eye was forcefully removed, with an object.
Kiyawa stated that the suspect was arrested after the police trailed and apprehended him, adding that he has since confessed to committing the crime.
He added that his confession also aid the arrest of the 107-year- old woman, whom he claimed, sent him to get the eye.
Abdullahi further stated that the case has been transferred to the CID Department for discreet investigation, at the end of which the suspects would be charged to court.
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