The Akwa Ibom State Police Command has recovered a baby boy, David Johnny, who was stolen by a doctor with the connivance of his mother, Esther Johnny, and sold to a woman in Abuja.
It was learnt that the mother initially denied knowledge of the crime as the police intensified efforts to unravel the whereabouts of the baby.
The Assistant Commissioner of Police, State Criminal Investigation Department, Akwa Ibom State, Mike Okoli, said this in Uyo on Tuesday.
He stated that when the police apprehended the doctor, he tried to frustrate police investigation into the matter.
He added that the police had to tell the doctor that they would charge him to court for child kidnapping if he failed to produce the missing child.
The CP said, “The police in Akwa Ibom State have rescued a baby boy, David Johnny, who was stolen when he was three-day-old and handed over to a doctor in Port Harcourt. The baby was subsequently taken to Abuja.
“When we found the doctor, he refused to cooperate as he tried to frustrate the efforts of the police in investigating the case of the stolen boy.
“My officers in the trafficking department moved from Uyo to Port Harcourt, Umuahia, and Aba in search of the stolen child.
“It was not until Wednesday, April 22, when the pressure became so much, that the woman who had bought the child, took the child back to the clinic in Port Harcourt, where she bought him, and abandoned him there,” he said.
According to him it was the phone call the woman, who had bought the child, made to the doctor who was in the police custody in Uyo that enabled them to trace the baby to the hospital.
He said, “The biological mother sold the child through the doctor to the woman for N300,000.”
Esther, 18, said David was her third baby and she could not take care of all of her children.
She said she was given N150,000 from the proceeds from the sale of her baby.
Punch