About five defendants have be remanded in prison custody for allegedly butchering one Christian Vurasi with machetes to death in B-Dere community in Gokana Local Government Area of Rivers State.
The defendants are: Promise kpenee, KpooBari Eegbara, Saturday Nkoi, Monday Gberegbara and Magnus Naadubon, all males while others are still at large.
They were arraigned on six counts in charge number: PMC/375c on offences bordering on murder, cultism among others.
The presiding magistrate, Chinagorom Mgbamoka however declined jurisdiction to try the defendants after the charges were read to them in pigeon English Language.
The court also ordered that the case file be sent to the state Director of Public Prosecution for advice and reminded the defendants of their right to seek bail at the high court before adjourning till March 30, 2020 for DPP’s advice.
Speaking with our correspondent shortly after the court sitting, counsel to the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th defendants, Barr Naazigha-Lue said: “It is surprising that magistrates are still going against recent supreme court decisions by refusing to grant bail on some murder cases like this one.
“Magistrates supposed to look at the proof of evidence and exercise discretion to grant bail if the proof of evidence has no nexus with the charges brought against the defendants.
“But unfortunately, even when the supreme court had said in several decisions that holding charges are no longer part of our laws, the police still frame some of these charges and take people to court under the guise that magistrates don’t have jurisdiction to try some of these cases like murder and end up remanding people in prison.
“And that is also leading to the serious congestion of our prisons.
“If you look at the Port Harcourt prison, it was built to detain about 805 inmates but now it has over 4,365 inmates because of some of these issues of holding to want of jurisdiction as reason not to grant bail.
“That is why we are calling on the relevant authorities who are involved in the criminal justice sector to still look into some of these issues and activate the relevant provisions of our laws so that people do not just suffer unnecessarily under framed up charges.”
