Jigawa State Police on Wednesday said it recorded 35 rape cases in the state between January and April this year.

The State’s Police Commissioner, Usman Gomna, at a media parley in Dutse, said there were more cases of rape and other unnatural offences than kidnapping and other violent crimes in the state.

The CP confirmed that rape topped the crime chart within the four months with 35 cases; kidnapping dropped to the bottom with 10 reported cases in the state within the period.

He further disclosed that some of the rape suspects had been charged to courts while others are still in police custody due to the ongoing industrial action by judiciary workers.

He added that statistical analysis of the rape cases indicated that parents need to do more to safeguard their wards, saying negligence and bad parenting were resulting in a high rate of rape among vulnerable hawking children.

“Some parents don’t really care about their children. They send their underage children on errands to unsafe places. Also, some of the rape victims were hawking in unsafe places that exposed them to rapists.

 “It is better for parents/guardian to monitor their hawking children by stationing them in safe locations instead of them going around hawking in dangerous places,” Gomna said.

The Jigawa State Government had, in February, enacted the Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law stipulating stiff punishment for rapists, including death penalty for rape convicts who infect their victims with HIV/AIDS

The law stipulates that rape victim(s) would be compensated with not less than N500,000, while the court would order rape offenders “to be subjected to public shame through radio announcements”.