Police say, Josephine Panyin Mensah, the woman currently being detained in the Western Region for alleged kidnapping, has confessed that she was neither kidnapped nor pregnant.
This was announced in a brief statement released by the Ghana Police Service on Friday, September 24, 2021.
“The suspect, Josephine Panyin Mensah, 28, has confessed to the Police during further investigations and stated that neither was she pregnant nor ever being kidnapped. The public will be updated with further details,” police added in the statement.
Josephine Panyin Mensah, alleged to be nine months pregnant, has been in the news since last Thursday after the media reported that she had been kidnapped during a dawn walk.
She resurfaced a week later at Axim in the Western Region without her alleged pregnancy or baby. She had claimed that she delivered the same day she went missing and that the kidnappers had stolen her baby.
The Western Regional Minister, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah subsequently claimed Josephine was not pregnant as reported, a claim corroborated by the Ghana Police Service.
Police conducted two separate medical tests on Josephine at different hospitals, with both reports proving that she was never pregnant.
Josephine’s relatives and neighbours however disagreed with the report of the Ghana Police Service.
Takoradi woman’s mother detained over the alleged kidnapping and ‘fake’ pregnancy
Citi News sources have revealed that the mother of Josephine Panyin Mensah, popularly called Auntie Agnes Essel, was on Thursday, September 23, 2021, detained by the police.
According to the sources, she spent the night in police cells in Takoradi.
Reports indicate that Josephine Panyin was in touch with the mother when she was allegedly kidnapped.
Meanwhile, the husband of the woman, Michael Simmons, was also interrogated on Thursday and again called on Friday morning to the Takoradi Central Police Command for further interrogation to determine his involvement in the alleged fake pregnancy and kidnapping.
