A teacher in the Northern Region, Eric Asante, who was jailed for fifteen years for allegedly defiling a 14-year old student in his class, has been acquitted and discharged by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n
This was after a DNA test carried out on the baby believed to have come about as a result of the supposed defilement, proved that he was not the biological father.<\/p>\n
Eric Asante, who was granted bail by the Supreme Court in September 2015 based on good conduct after serving two-third of his jail-term, was found guilty on September 5, 2005, and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment with hard labour by the Tamale High Court, for defiling one Rubamatu Mohammed.<\/p>\n
But the Supreme Court, ruling on an appeal he filed against his conviction, stated that the sentence of the teacher could not hold because there were a lot of inaccuracies in the evidence provided by the prosecution.<\/p>\n
Mr. Asante, who had always maintained his innocence, filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal on October 6, 2006, but it was dismissed.<\/p>\n
He then proceeded to the Supreme Court in 2012, where the court ordered for a DNA test to be conducted on the baby.<\/p>\n
The court order was served and received on Rubamatu’s behalf by her aunts, Juliet Tinjina and Gladys Abokokpa, who were then taking care of Rubamatu’s child in Tamale.<\/p>\n
Although the court gave them a period of eight-weeks within which the test should be conducted, the family refused to bring the child to Accra as ordered by the court.<\/p>\n
Not even the intervention of the Northern Regional Police Commander persuaded them to act on the orders of the court.<\/p>\n
Months after the order, the baby was finally brought to Accra for the test, with the results showing that the teacher was not the biological father of the baby.<\/p>\n
The Supreme Court said Mr. Eric Asante would have to apply to the state for compensation. Renowned Humans Rights Lawyer, Francis Xavier Sosu, was the counsel for the teacher.<\/p>\n
–
\nBy: Fred Djabanor\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A teacher in the Northern Region, Eric Asante, who was jailed for fifteen years for allegedly defiling a 14-year old student in his class, has been acquitted and discharged by the Supreme Court. This was after a DNA test carried out on the baby believed to have come about as a result of the supposed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11],"tags":[1656,3474,3,3475,3476],"class_list":["post-288385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-slider-1","category-top-stories","tag-defilement","tag-dna-test","tag-ghana-news","tag-jailed","tag-teacher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=288385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=288385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=288385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=288385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}