A BUSINESSWOMAN who in 2010 stole a five-month-old baby whose identity is still unknown, has been convicted and sentenced to a fine of 100 penalty units, equivalent to GH¢1,200.
This was after Justice Patience Mills-Tetteh, a High Court judge with additional responsibility as a Circuit Court judge, found Celestine Owusu, the baby thief, guilty of child stealing.
The convict was arrested somewhere in 2010 after a DNA test showed that she and the man she claimed impregnated her were not the biological parents of the child.
The court ordered her to pay the fine or in default serve a prison term of five years.
The trial judge however handed the said child to the convict after observing that nobody had made any claim for it.
Her daughter, Portia Owusu Annor, who informed the police that she was present at the Tema Women’s Hospital when her mother was delivered of the child, was also charged with conspiracy to commit crime, but the court acquitted and discharged her.
The convict reportedly paid the fine immediately after court sitting and walked home with the child, who is now three-and-a-half years old.
The facts, as presented by Malike Wanyah, a State Attorney, were that the complainant is a mechanic in Switzerland and an ex-lover of Celestine, who lives at Baatsona Spintex.
The prosecutor narrated that in October 2006, Celestine rented one of the complainant’s stores at Spintex Road.
Celestine further pleaded with the complainant to accommodate her in one of his rooms as she had been ejected.
The prosecutor stated that the complainant agreed and offered her one of the rooms in his house at Baatsona for free.
However, while Celestine was living in the house, the complainant had a sexual relationship with her before he left for Switzerland in November 2006.
A month later, the relationship came to an end after a misunderstanding between the couple.
The complainant on June 1, 2009, ejected Celestine and other tenants in the house.
Later Celestine reportedly started spreading information that she was pregnant for the complainant and further took the matter to the District and Juvenile Court in Accra.
The court tried the case in the absence of the complainant and ordered that she should rent some of the complainant’s stores and use the proceeds to cater for the pregnancy.
Celestine claimed that she was delivered of the baby on January 1, 2010 and insisted that the complainant was the biological father of the child she named as Ernest Nana Nhyira Nyamekye Opoku.
The complainant denied being the father of the child so the court ordered a DNA test at Medlab Ghana Ltd, the results of which disclosed on April 1, 2010 that they were both not the parents of the child.
Celestine when arrested, according to the prosecutor, stated that she attended antenatal at the La General Hospital from May 2010 and was delivered of the baby at the Tema Women’s Hospital.
However, investigations conducted at the La General Hospital revealed that on December 17, 2010, Celestine reported at the outpatient department with general malaise and was asked to see a gynecologist because she claimed she was pregnant.
However, she reportedly left the hospital and never returned.
At the Tema Women’s Hospital, the police found out that on December 30, 2009 she was at the hospital with a complaint of infertility for 18 years.
She was admitted but on the third day she asked permission to go home and take her adopted son, who she requested to be circumcised, from her baby sitter.
The prosecutor disclosed that in June 2010, when Celestine was granted police enquiry bail, she went and pleaded with the doctor in charge of the Tema Women’s Hospital to forge a document to support her claim that she was delivered of a baby at his hospital, but the doctor refused.
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