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