The Odumase-Krobo Circuit Court has imprisoned a 32-year-old woman for seven years with hard labour for dipping the hands of her husband’s 10-year-old niece into boiling water.
Veronica Koranteng pleaded guilty to causing harm to the girl when she appeared before the court presided over by Francis Gbedzro, and was sentenced on her own plea on December 22, 2020.
Making her case, the prosecutor, Detective Sergeant Leticia Acheampomaa, told the court that the girl had been living with her uncle and his wife at Kpong in the Lower Manya Krobo Municipality for the past 18 months.
According to the Prosecutor, on Wednesday, July 15, 2020, Veronica asked the victim to clean their room but after the girl had finished performing the chore, Veronica was not convinced that her niece had delivered as instructed.
So the culprit, in the quest to teach the girl a lesson, dipped the girl’s two hands in boiling water.
The prosecutor said upon seeing the impact of her action, Veronica dipped the girl’s hands in a bucket of cold water, and warned her not to disclose her ordeal to anybody, including her husband, the girl’s uncle.
The girl’s hands, however, started deteriorating and affected her health thereafter.
The prosecutor said on September 21, 2020, another uncle of the girl visited the family and upon seeing the child’s condition sent her to her parents at Kpetoe in the Volta Region where she narrated her ordeal.
The parents then lodged a complaint at the Kpetoe Police Station, and the case was referred to the Kpong Police, who arrested Veronica and her husband and handed them over to the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit of the Ghana Police Service at Akuse.