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Delta State Police Command has arrested a 17-year-old secondary school student, identified as Chiamaka, for allegedly staging her own kidnap and collecting a ransom of N500,000 from her mother.
The command’s spokesperson, Bright Edafe, disclosed the development in a video shared on his official Facebook page, revealing that the suspect carried out the act with the help of three accomplices.
Edafe explained that the teenager, an SS3 student, is currently in police custody after investigations uncovered that the reported abduction was deliberately arranged to defraud her family.
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During interrogation, the suspect reportedly admitted that she and her friends planned the incident and falsely claimed she had been kidnapped in order to obtain money from her mother.
She told investigators that peer pressure influenced her decision, adding that she initially resisted but later agreed after persuasion from the friends she had recently met.
According to the police, the group travelled from Ugolo community in Delta State to Port Harcourt, where they checked into a hotel and began making calls to the victim’s mother demanding ransom.
Edafe said the woman, described as a widowed peasant farmer, struggled to raise the money by seeking assistance from others before reporting the matter to the police, whose investigation later exposed inconsistencies in the kidnap claim.
The police spokesman added that cases of self-orchestrated abductions were becoming common among youths aged between 15 and 20, noting that the suspect confessed that one of her friends had previously executed a similar scheme, which inspired them to replicate the act.
