Court fines baby thief
An Accra Circuit Court on Tuesday handed a fine of 100 penalty unit to Celestine Owusu, a businesswoman, for stealing a five and a half months old baby boy.
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Celestine was sentenced to pay a fine of 100 penalty units, equivalent to GHȼ1,200 or in default, five years in jail in hard labour on the second count of stealing.
She was however acquitted and discharged on the first count of conspiracy to commit crime.
The Court, presided over by Mrs Patience Mills-Tetteh, however, granted her the custody of the child at the centre of the dispute since no one has shown up to claim the child.
The convict was said to have stolen a child aged five and half months and named him Ernest Nana Nhyira Nyamekye Opoku.
The case as presented by Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Mary Agbozo is that, the complainant is a mechanic based in Switzerland whilst the convict is a businesswoman, residing at Baatsona-spintex.
She said during the month of October 2006, the convict rented one of the complainant stores at spintex road, and around that same time she pleaded with the complainant that she had been ejected from her house, so he the complainant should assist her with a room.
The complainant then offered her one of the rooms in his house at Baatsona free of charge.
ASP Agbozo told the court that within that same period in October 2006, the complainant had sexual affairs with the convict, after which he went back to Switzerland in November, 2006.
She said a month later the complainant came back to Ghana and a misunderstanding ensued between them, which finally ended the relationship.
On June 1, 2009, the complainant served the convict and other tenants in the house with a letter of ejection, upon which the convict started raising allegations that she had been impregnated by the complainant.
The prosecution noted that the complainant vehemently denied it, but the convict sent the matter to the district and juvenile court, Accra, where the court trailed the case in the absence of the complainant and ordered that the convict could rent some of the complainant’s stores and use the money to care for the pregnancy.
She said the convict alleged that she delivered on January 1, 2010 and insisted that the complainant was the biological father of the child, but the complainant still denied it and the court ordered for a DNA to be conducted to ascertain whether he was the father or not.
ASP Agbozo noted that upon this the DNA was conducted on April 1 2010 and the result showed that both the complainant and the convict were not the biological parents of the child.
She said early in June, 2010, the Department of Social Welfare had information that the convict was maltreating the child and tasked the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit to assist and rescue the child.
The convict was arrested and during investigations she stated that she attended antenatal at the La General Hospital (LGH) from May 2010 and delivered at the Tema Women’s Hospital (TWH).
She said investigations from the LGH indicated that on December 17, 2010, the convict reported at their outpatient department with general Malaise and was asked to see a gynaecologist at the hospital because she claimed she was pregnant, but left the hospital and was never seen again.
According to the prosecution, report from the TWH also indicated that she reported there with a complaint of infertility for 18 years, and was admitted but asked permission to go home and see her baby sitter, and turned up in the evening with a baby boy and disclosed to the doctors that the boy was her adopted son and requested that he should be circumcised.
She said during the month of June 2012, after the convict had been granted police enquiry bail, she went and pleaded with the doctor in charge of the TWH to forge documents to support her claim that she delivered at his hospital, but the doctor refused.
The convict was later charged with the offences and brought to court.
Source: GNA/Ghana