In her first appearance in court on Monday, Josephine Panyin Mensah, the lady at the center of the contentious alleged fake pregnancy and kidnapping case in Takoradi, pleaded not guilty.
Despite police allegations that she admitted to fabricating the abduction and pregnancy, she has not been charged.
According to reports, the lady was taken to Takoradi Habour Circuit Court A by police about 6:00 a.m. and looked calm.
She is charged with two counts of misleading a public official and publishing false news with the purpose to create fear and terror.
In an earlier interview, the acting Director-General in charge of Public Affairs at the Ghana Police Service, ACP Kwesi Ofori, said that the police were going to prosecute her because she wasted their resources by fabricating a narrative and leading them on a wild goose chase.
“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,” ACP Kwesi Ofori said.
For the last week, the contentious subject has dominated media discourse. Her reported disappearance became widely publicized approximately two weeks ago.
She was discovered in Axim, many miles distant from Takoradi, where she allegedly disappeared, mute, unkempt, and devoid of any signs of the alleged pregnancy.
Claims that she gave birth on the same day she was reportedly abducted, with the baby stolen by her alleged kidnappers, have been called into question, with the Western Regional Minister, Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah, saying on Wednesday, September 22 that the pregnancy was a hoax.
In a later statement, the police administration verified the minister’s allegation.
According to the authorities, tests performed on her at a separate institution also proved that she was never pregnant.
A number of individuals have been questioned by police in connection with her case.
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