A 19-year-old apprentice is in the grips of the Assin Fosu police for allegedly masterminding a fake kidnapping with her boyfriend to extort money from her parents.
Felicia Appoh, the mother of the suspect, narrating the incident said her daughter, Comfort Aidoo, called one of their neighbours at Breman Adamanu in the Asikuma Odoben Brakwa District claiming she had been kidnapped.
Sounding distressed, Comfort alleged that the kidnappers had held her captive in an uncompleted building in a neighbouring town.
She then handed the phone to the alleged kidnapper who demanded a GH₵2,000 ransom from the parents.
He threatened that if they failed to pay the ransom, he would behead Comfort, as he already had a machete to her neck.
According to Felicia Appoh, she and her frightened husband frantically searched for the said amount to save their daughter from getting killed.
She said about 15 minutes after they paid the money into a mobile money account as suggested by the alleged kidnapper, their daughter called them to tell them she had been released.
She alleged that she had been dropped off near a forest at Assin Juaso.
However, when the family went to the location to pick her up, they noticed some inconsistencies in her story.
The mother said the suspect initially told them she was snatched into a taxi blindfolded and sent to the uncompleted building.
But she later changed her story. She told them that her ex-boyfriend abducted her and demanded all the money he spent on her while they were together.
Doubting the story, the family handed her over to the police for further investigations.
Meanwhile, the father of the suspect, Yaw Appoh, who lamented the trouble they went through to raise the ransom money has asked the police to thoroughly interrogate her daughter to find the whereabouts of her accomplice.