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Molly Kilete, Abuja
The Police force headquarters in Abuja, Tuesday paraded 48 suspects for kidnapping, homicide, armed robbery, unlawful possession of firearms, car theft and other criminal offences.
Among the suspect was one Abubakar Haliru, who planned the kidnap of his cousin Binta Mohammed, 48, following his inability to pay back the loan he borrowed from her to expand his business.
Parading the suspects before newsmen, Mba, said the suspect lured his cousin to escort him to a place where he wanted to collect money and give to her only to hand her over to a kidnap gang.
According to him, the cousin has been a Pilar of support to the suspect and had given him a soft loan to purchase four tricycles for his personal use.
He said the suspect was expected to pay back the loan over time.
“At a point, the suspect, clearly not ready to pay back the loan, lured cousin out of Zaria in pretext that he was going to collect money from somewhere.
“In the process, the suspect handed over his cousin to a gang of kidnapper in Galadiwa Forest in Kaduna State.
“After handing her over to the kidnappers, the suspect instructed the gang to make as much money as they can from her and ensure that they kill her.
“But the cousin had a divine visitation that helped her to escape from the kidnappers’ den on the first night of her kidnap”.
However Luck ran out on Haliru, after his cousin escaped from the group and landed in another kidnap gang by which time she had made contact with the police who deployed men of the IGP Intelligence Response Team(IRT), to rescue her in one of the forest in Kaduna state.
The suspect who said that he did that with the hope of getting money from her to pay his debt, says he regrets his actions saying he planned her kidnapping because of the pressure she mounted on him to pay the money.
Mba, also paraded 47, other suspects for armed robbery who said they went into robbery because of hardship.
Also paraded were a gang of three man car snatching syndicate who snatched a Toyota car at gunpoint and sold it for N900,000, and used the money to buy a gun for N620,000.
Mba listed the items recovered from the suspects to include 24 assorted weapons consisting of one GPMG, three AK47 riffles, nine AK49 riffles, 495 AK47 live ammunition and ten laptops.
