The police have arrested a 42-year-old man in Adamawa State for allegedly having unlawful carnal knowledge of a seven-year-old neighbour.
IbrahimBello allegedly lured the girl to his room at a compound in Saminaka, a community in Yola South Local Government Area, after she left her parents’ apartment to attend Quranic classes.
The Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO) in the state, DSP Suleiman Nguroje, who disclosed the development on Wednesday morning, said the suspect fled after the incident but was rounded up in the night of Monday, August 9.
Explaining what the police had established on the case through investigation, the PPRO said the seven-year-old girl had left the house with her younger brother for their Quranic school last Saturday, August 7, only for Ibrahim to call the girl into his room.
The girl remained in Ibrahim’s room until the brother returned from the school and the mother asked of his sister and had to raise an alarm when the boy told her that his sister did not go with him.
According to the PPRO, it was when the mother raised an alarm that the girl came out of Ibrahim’s room, after which Ibrahim fled the neighbourhood.
“The suspect went into hiding but our men kept vigil until Ibrahim returned to his house in the night of Monday with intention of disappearing again the following morning, but our men who had been watching out for him, arrested him,” Nguroje explained.
The PPRO said neighbourhood rape has remained common and parents need to beware of men that their daughters call uncle.
A source, who spoke with both the suspect and the victim, said the man denied having carnal knowledge of the girl, and that the mother is framing him for the offence.
The source however faulted the defence, saying the girl disclosed that the man had done the same thing to her before.
The source added that the man is a father of four children whose wife ran from him after it was found out that he got his own sister pregnant.