The Lagos State High Court in Igbosere
has fixed November 10 to rule on whether or not to quash the murder and illegal
sales of firearms charges filed by the Lagos State Directorate of Public
Prosecutions against alleged kidnap kingpin, Chukwudumeme Onwuamadike, alias
Evans.
Justice Oluwatoyin Taiwo fixed the date
on Friday after hearing two applications filed by Evans, through his lawyer,
Mr. Olukoya Ogungbeje, challenging the competence of the two fresh charges and
seeking to quash them.
The two fresh charges are different from
one, involving kidnapping, on which Evans and his co-defendants were earlier
arraigned on August 30, 2017 before Justice Hakeem Oshodi of the Ikeja division
of the court.
The Lagos State DPP had on Monday
attempted to arraign Evans and others on the two fresh charges, but the move
was resisted by Evans’ lawyer, Ogungbeje, who contended that the charges were
incompetent, saying he had filed two applications seeking to quash them.
Justice Taiwo had then adjourned till
Friday to entertain the applications.
Moving the applications on Friday,
Ogungbeje described the new charges as an abuse of court processes, contending
that some of the counts bordering on kidnapping were merely a duplication of
the ones filed before Justice Oshodi in Ikeja.
“Counts 4 and 5 constitute a gross abuse
of court processes as similar charges on the same offence of kidnapping had
earlier been filed by the prosecution against the same first defendant in
charge numbers LD/5962C/2017 and LD/5970C/2017,” Ogungbeje said.
- Punch
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