A 26-YEAR-OLD seamstress at Old Fadama in Accra, Joyce Asabea, was arrested at the weekend by the police for allegedly stealing a two-month-old baby from its mother. The suspect has admitted to the offence, saying she stole the baby in a desperate move to save her marriage.

“I have been married for one year without a child, and now my husband is threatening to divorce me,” she said from her cell at the Old Fadama Police Station.

The suspect was said to have fled with the little girl to Atimpoku in the Eastern Region, where she announced to her friends that she had given birth.

A police search team traced her to the town and arrested her while she was nursing the baby.

A police spokesman said in an interview that the suspect was a neighbour and a close friend of the baby’s mother. The spokesman said the suspect often visited the nursing mother and helped her to attend to the baby. During one of such visits, the suspect was alleged to have offered to adopt the child, but her offer was turned down by the child’s mother.

The spokesman said that the suspect later sent a young boy to the baby’s mother at home last Friday, to inform her that her elder brother had arrived from the village with a large quantity of foodstuff and needed help to carry them to the house.

Upon hearing the false news, the child’s mother ran to the road side in search of her brother. Meanwhile, the suspect who saw her running out of her room, sneaked into the room quickly and took away the baby. Following a complaint to the police, a search team was dispatched to the suspect’s hometown at Ajena, in the Asuogyaman District.

The suspect was not there, but the search team met her mother, who led them to a house at Atimpoku, where she was found feeding the baby.

She was subsequently arrested. According to the police, the suspect will be arrainged before court after further investigations into the case. Meanwhile, the baby has been handed over to her mother.