KAMPALA: City Hall Court Grade One Magistrate Patrick Talisuna has ordered a 23-year-old woman to pay Shs300,000 after she was found guilty of faking her kidnap.
Aminah Mirembe, a resident of Kinawattaka, Mutungo, in Nakawa Division, Kampala, first appeared before court last week and pleaded guilty to charges of giving false information to police.
However before being sentenced, Mirembe pleaded to the magistrate to have mercy on her as she was just testing her husband’s level of love.
According to the court documents, Mirembe is said to have approached ASP Moses Acaye on May 26, at Ntinda Police Station in Kampala and gave him false information that she had been kidnapped and that the alleged kidnappers were demanding Shs500,000 as ransom from her husband.
Prosecution contends that Mirembe’s acts caused C/ASP Acaye to devote his time and services to investigate fake information.
By press time, Mirembe had not managed to raise the Shs300, 000 and had been taken to Luzira prison to serve a one year imprisonment term.
More than 20 reports of kidnap have been recorded by police over the last three months, according to the police.
The records indicate that at least one case of kidnap was recorded every day, since March 2018 in various parts of the country.
However, 20 of them were false alarms and self-Kidnaps while five of them were serious with all of them resulting in loss of life.
Police spokesperson Emilian Kayima during a police press briefing said that the trend overshot after the infamous kidnap of Suzan Magara, a 28-year old cashier, whose body was found along the Southern bypass in Kampala after 20-days in captivity.
In February, Magara was kidnapped and later murdered after her abductors reportedly demanded for $1m (about Shs 3.5 billion). At the time of her death, her family had managed to send about Shs 700 million.
Kayima said that 20 of the people who faked their kidnap in the aftermath of the gruesome events have been arrested and charged in court, for giving false information to a public officer.
He added that it’s pertinent for any case of kidnap to be reported even if it’s a false alarm. He says the persons who report cases will not be criminalized but any person found to have self-kidnapped will be held criminally liable.
