Takoradi Circuit Court A in the Western Region has granted bail to Josephine Panyin Mensah, the 28-year-old woman who allegedly faked a pregnancy and kidnapping.
She was granted bail in the sum of GHS50,000 with two sureties.
Even though there have been extensive reports that she has confessed to the police on faking her pregnancy, on Monday, she pleaded not guilty to the charges of deceiving a public officer and publication of false news with intent to cause fear and panic in court.
The acting Director-General in charge of Public Affairs at the Ghana Police Service, ACP Kwesi Ofori, in an earlier interview stated her prosecution is due to the fact that she wasted their resources and led the police on a wild goose chase.
“We are looking at the development closely and there is a greater possibility that she might appear before the court because she manufactured all these things with a figment of her own imagination and put the police into business. And we deployed a 40-member search team and even when we located her through public assistance, we took her to the hospital with policemen providing security and where she claimed to have attended antenatal clinics, it turned out to be false. We went in for a second opinion and got a team of doctors to work on her.”
“The police also placed an Assistant Commissioner of Police who is a criminal phycologist at her disposal who travelled from Accra to Takoradi and our Head of Counselling Department also went to Takoradi to assess her and offer assistance. So if you quantify all these things, it is a big investment, but the police will continue to offer good support to our people and offer assistance”, ACP Ofori said.
Earlier official complaints lodged by Josephine’s husband at the police station on Friday, September 17 speculated that she was 9-month pregnant and had been kidnapped.
However, after being found at Axim, on Tuesday, September 21, 2021, she was without her supposed nine-month pregnancy.
This heightened fears about the viciousness of her alleged kidnappers in the Western Region.
She was admitted to the Axim Government hospital and subsequently examined by a team of medical officers to affirm whether she was pregnant, but reports prove she was not.
Following this development, the Takoradi divisional Police command arrested and detained her after being discharged from the hospital to assist in investigations.
The second test conducted by the Police at the Effia-Nkwanta Regional hospital also revealed she was not pregnant.
The Police in a statement on Friday September 24 said “The suspect, Josephine Panyin Mensah, 28, has confessed to the Police during further investigations that neither was she pregnant nor ever being kidnapped”.
The Family and neighbours interrogated also disputed police reports that the woman was never pregnant.
