A
PRISONER serving his sentence at the Nsawam Medium Security Prison reportedly
pranked the security agencies in the heat of the kidnapping incident in June
involving two Canadian girls in Kumasi.
The
inmate who made the call to a police hotline from Nsawam Prisons had told the
police that he knew the whereabouts of the two Canadian girls.
ASP
Godwin Ahianyo of the Ashanti Regional Police Public Affairs Unit, who made the
disclosure, said: “This prisoner told us that the girls were being kept at a
location at Oda and we believed him.”
Initially,
the police were not aware that they were communicating with a prisoner who was
just making mockery of them, so they took his information seriously but later
it turned out to be false.
The prisoner whose name was not
given was said to have used a mobile phone to call the police hotlines on
several occasions, claiming that he was aware of the whereabouts of the
kidnapped girls.
According to the police PRO, later
on, the supposed informant refused to pick his calls when the police tried to
reach him for additional information about the girls.
“We then contacted the telcos to
identify the location of the one using that mobile number and it emerged that
the individual was calling from the Nsawam Prisons,” he said on Kumasi-based Nhyira FM.
ASP Ahianyo cautioned the public
that security hotlines are for serious business and people should not call in to
give wrong information, saying when people’s lives are in danger,
there should be no pranks.
The two Canadian girls were
alighting from an Uber car in front of their hostel at Danyame in Kumasi when
some unknown people kidnapped two of them at gunpoint and sped off with their
car.
A joint effort by the police, national security and other security agencies helped to rescue the two girls at a location near Antoa. The eight people suspected to be connected to the kidnapping are currently on trial at an Accra High Court.
FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi
