A Magistrate’s Court sitting in Ilorin, Kwara State has remanded two brothers simply identified as Abdullateef and Yusuf Adekanye in a detention facility for allegedly exhuming their father’s body for ritual purposes.
The two brothers were charged on Wednesday with criminal conspiracy and exhuming a corpse.
According to the prosecution, the offenses violate and are punished under sections 97 and 226 of the Penal Code Law.
Moshood Adebayo, the prosecutor, stated that the two brought some persons who are currently at large to their family compound and removed the bones of their late father, Zakarya Adekanye, from the grave without the knowledge of other family members.
Adebayo further alleged that the defendants desecrated the burial ground located at the Agba Akin Court, Offa, where their father was interred in 2012 according to Islamic rites.
He told the court that the defendants exhumed and packed all the skeletons away for ritual purposes, which contravened the law of the land.
The brothers, however, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The prosecution prayed the court to remand them in custody pending the determination of the case.
The Magistrate, Mohammed Adams, granted the prosecutor’s application and ordered the defendants remanded in a custodial center.
The case was adjourned till April 12, 2022, for further hearing.