Bolgatanga, July 6 GNA - Mrs Elizabeth Awuni, retired Editor of the Ghana News Agency and native of Sapeliga in the Bawku West District, has challenged the authenticity of the story about a fetish python swallowing up a priestess serving at its shrine at Sapeliga.

Speaking to the GNA in Bolgatanga Mrs Awuni, who was featured in the story, said the story given to the GNA was not accurate. She related that last Saturday the Chief of Sapeliga, Naba Baba Ayagiba, who happens to be her brother, sent two men from the village to enquire from her in Bolgatanga how she came by that information and whether she was aware of the publication.

"He said as a Chief of the village he would have been the first person to know if anything of that sort had occurred in the community, but that he only heard of it for the first time on the national radio," she said.

Mrs Awuni said the publication came as a huge surprise to residents of the village, and cautioned journalists to be careful about people, who came to their offices to tell such stories. Meanwhile, the Bawku Police, the source of the story, said when they heard about the incident and rushed to Sapeliga they discovered that the woman had already been buried and nobody was ready to talk about it.

to be its mouthpiece.

While looking for the priestess, who had been missing for three days, the inhabitants decided to slash the python into two, only to find her badly decomposed body.