Police picked her up from her New Bell abode March 2, 2012, for kidnapping a newborn at the Mbanga District Hospital recently.

Collective efforts between Mbanga (Moungo Division) and Douala security forces in developing information resulted in the swift location of the missing infant (dead) and suspected kidnapper. Security forces tracked her to Douala to her New Bell abode six days after, where they identified, arrested and detained her. She had abducted the baby in the night of February 25 breaking 26. The arrest was a quick turnaround for investigators who were initially baffled by the gruesome abduction, and who had learned only February 26 - a day before the dead body was found - that the baby had been kidnapped from the hospital ward when her mother slept. The baby was found dead in a handbag in Mbanga at least 24 hours after abduction. The kidnapper was arrested after she was questioned at her New Bell home last Friday, March 2, 2012, by security forces, a police said. The woman was brought to the Judicial Police, where she remained under investigation. Security forces say it took almost a week to identify kidnapper because she looked least unsuspecting at the time she turned up at the hospital ward: she was pregnant, looking like a woman who will soon put to birth. Nobody, including her close neighbours, suspected the pregnancy to be fake. She told friends in recent days that she will soon put to birth. In her room, the childless woman furnished a child’s bed, towels, child’s dresses, buckets and other maternity requirements. She said for 7 months she regularly bind cotton and other soft material to her stomach and this gave her acquaintances the impression that she was pregnant. “This she did in apparent preparation to kidnap a baby as well as wave off suspicion that she had stolen a baby,” according to a police. She told security forces that she lifted the baby from the bed, placed her in her handbag, moved secretively out of the ward and towards the hospital fence, then threw outside the baby and bag over the tall fence. Before she could she could hurry towards the main gate to collect and make away with the baby, it had become public within the hospital the baby was missing. “I hid myself in a corner around the hospital, but I stayed far away from the bag waiting that the people who were standing beside the fence and close to the bag should leave,” she reportedly told police. A while after those around discovered the bag a picked it up, but did not verify what was inside. “At this level I could not turn up again but went into my car which I parked outside the hospital,” she reportedly explained. It was at least 24 hours after that the bag was checked by surrounding neighbours who kept the bag, apparently waiting for its owner to come up for it.