Nollywood actress, Chioma Toplis, has been remanded at the Nigeria Correctional Centre, Afara, following a sitting at the Magistrate Court Umuahia, Abia State.
Toplis was dragged to court over alleged defaming publications on social media.
She was accused of cybercrime for using her Facebook page to publish “a malicious publication” against the Chairman of Abia State Traditional Prime Ministers Council, High Chief Uche Akwukwuegbu, popularly known as BAWAS.
The charge sheet numbered 124c/2022 further accused the 48-year-old of using the same Facebook page label Akwukwuegbu as “a rapist and a ritualist”.
The actress is said to have accused committed offence between May 28, 2021 and May 31, 2021.
The one-count charge read, “That you Chioma Toplis ‘f’ between the 28th and 31st of May, 2021, while residing in Nigeria, and being a social network user, and being under the Umuahia North Magisterial District and knowingly and maliciously published in your Facebook page “CHIOMA TOPLIS” the following: ‘Ur rapist father invited his daughter in-law (now Ex) to Nigeria without his son’s consent and slept with her’.
“You equally called him a ritualist who used his last daughter as the sacrificial lamb of the family, hence she is perpetually sick and hidden in the house. A publication which you know to be false and intended to cause annoyance, inconveniences, danger, obstruction, enmity, hatred, ill-will or needless anxiety to the person of Chief Uche Akwukwuegbu, the Chairman of Abia State Traditional Prime Ministers Council, a renowned Community Leader and business mogul, and you thereby committed an offence punishable under Section 24(b)of the Cyber Crime (Prohibition, Prevention etc) Act, 2015, as applicable in Abia State.
The accused had no plea for bail following the reading of the charge, and the trial Chief Magistrate, Idika Kalu, ordered for the actress to be remanded at the Afara Correctional Centre, Umuahia.
Chief Akwukwuegbu, who is a brother-in-law to the actress, denied the allegations, wondering why the accused resorted to blackmail him.
She had boasted of being highly “connected and untouchable after rubbishing me on her Facebook page but she has to prove it at the court,” he added.
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