The Chief Magistrate, F.J. Ajiboye of an Akure Magistrates’ Court has sentenced a 35-year-old pastor identified as Solomon Bello, to three years imprisonment after he was found guilty of possessing human body parts.
Bello was earlier charged with two counts of conspiracy and unlawful possession.
The Chief Magistrate ruled that the pastor was guilty of the allegations levelled against him, judging from the evidences tendered before the court and thereby sentenced the convict to 36 months in the Olokuta correctional centre institution.
Police prosecutor, Inspector, Abayomi Jejeniwa, while reading the facts of the case, said the convict, on January 14, at about 7a.m. in Morayo Street Ayeyemi area of Ondo, conspired with some people at large to prepare a criminal charm with human parts.
Jejeniwa also told the court that Bello had two bony components from a human neck and the vertebral column in his custody, in addition to a transparent plastic jar holding cleanly sliced fragments of human heart tissue from two human adults’ hearts.
Also found in the pastor’s possession was a wooden box filled with various criminal charms and kola nuts.
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The criminal code, Cap. 370, Vol. I, Laws of Ondo State, 2006, sections 213(b) and 516, according to him, were violated.
According to the prosecutor, “the convict, when arrested, could not give satisfactory account of how he came about it to the police”
The prosecutor used three witnesses and the items that were found as exhibits to support his case.
To serve as a warning to others who could be operating in a similar manner, the prosecutor asked the court to punish the defendant appropriately.
The accused denied the accusations made against him in his defence through his attorney, S. Aliu.
He said the two hearts discovered on him were the hearts of pigs that he had purchased. When he submerged them in water, he said, they expanded like human hearts.
In his judgement, Ajiboye sentenced the convict to one calendar year in imprisonment for the first count and two calendar years for the second charge, without an option of fine.