• Girl abducted, taken to forest •Mob catches, beats male genital thief to pulp
From Femi Folaranmi, Yenagoa
Suspected ritualists specialising in kidnapping victims using tricycles have invaded Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.
According to investigations, the syndicate preys on customers coming out of the bank by hypnotising them and immediately ferrying them away in their tricycles.
A victim, Miss Konbonye who narrated her experience said that she was kidnapped while coming out of a new generation bank on Friday, December 1, and spent four days with her captors before she was released.
“On Friday December I, left my house at Okaka for the bank to do some transactions. I finished and came out of the bank and flagged down a Keke (tricycle). There was one man at the back when I entered. The man brought out a white handkerchief. That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up in a thick forest,” she said.
She said that she saw dead bodies drenched in blood, including a pregnant woman whose foetus had been removed in the forest, where she was kept.
Her words: “I saw dead bodies with blood all over. There was also a pregnant woman who was cut open and the baby in her womb brought out. One of the men led me to the others and there was some discussion and he was asked to take me away. Immediately I was taken into the tricycle. I later woke up close to a church’’.
From findings, the church members who saw Konboye around 4:00a.m thought that she was a mad woman, but after she regained consciousness, she explained to them what happened to her.
She was able to give the church members the number of her sister who was immediately called to pick her up.
Konbonye was taken to the hospital where a thorough medical examination was carried out on her before she was put on a drip.
The matter was said to have been reported to the police though she said she could not recall the exact location, where she was taken to.
Meanwhile there was pandemonium at Prosco road, Okaka, on Friday, when a middle-aged man raised an alarm over his missing genitals.
According to the victim, he shook the hands of a man when he noticed an unusual feeling prompting him to raise the alarm.
The alarm attracted a mob, which quickly apprehended the suspect and he confessed to have stolen the victims’ genitals.
The mob descended on him, but he was rescued by a police patrol team, which whisked him away from the scene.
“I was inside my house when I heard the voice of a man shouting that his manhood had been stolen. I came out and saw a man running away, other people in the area ran after him and we apprehended him. He confessed to have stolen the man’s manhood. We told him to return it. He was about explaining that it cannot be returned immediately when people started to beat him before he was rescued by the police’’
A police source at Ekeki Police station said the matter is being investigated.
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