Josephine Panyin Mensah (Simons) of Takoradi in the Western Region has been arrested for allegedly faking her pregnancy and kidnapping story.
The police arrested her on Friday evening (24 September) after she allegedly confessed that the story was a hoax.
In a Facebook post, the police said: “The suspect, Josephine Panyin Mensah, 28, has confessed to the police during further investigations and stated that neither was she pregnant nor ever being [sic] kidnapped.”
The police had initially informed the public that two separate tests proved that the woman was never pregnant.
The mobile telephone number used to call family members in Takoradi to demand a ransom was actually registered in her name, the state-owned Daily Graphic quotes top police sources as saying.
The woman’s mother and husband, Michael Simons, who were being kept in police custody as suspects, were released late Friday evening.
“Never pregnant”
Speaking on The Asaase Breakfast Show on Wednesday (22 September), Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, the Western Regional Minister, said a preliminary investigation by the National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) had shown that the kidnapping was fake and so was the pregnancy.
“… The information that he [the doctor] gave to our police was that the girl doesn’t seem to be someone who was pregnant in the first place, and all the signs and symptoms don’t show someone who has given birth in the last six days.
“I have directed the police to do further investigations on the girl’s mother, the girl herself and the husband. So that’s currently what we are doing,” Okyere Darko-Mensah said.
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