An anonymous Short Message Service (SMS) received by the Kano State Commissioner for Health, Dr Aminu Aliyu Tsanyawa, has triggered a kidnap scare which has become a subject of investigation by the police.
Tsanyawa had reported to the police at about 11.am on Monday, March 1, that he got an anonymous message with a threat to kidnap 200 students of the School of Health Technology, Kano.
Consequently, it was learnt that police detectives attached to the Anti-kidnapping unit at the Criminal Investigation Department (SCID) of the state police command commenced investigation which led to the arrest of a teenager and two other persons.
Reliably sources told Scudnews that the suspects, including a woman and a teenager, Adamu Rabiu, aged 18, are resident in an apartment at PRP Quarters in Kano.
However, besides Rabiu, the identities of the two other suspects could not be ascertained as of the time of filing this report.
It was further learnt the detectives recovered the mobile telephone and SIM card used in sending the threat SMS to the state Commissioner for Health.
The suspects, according to sources, are in police custody, and had provided useful information on the incident, which reportedly triggered security beef-up and deployment of police patrols.
Ismaila Shuaibu Dikko, the state Commissioner of Police, confirmed the arrest of three suspects linked to the threat message in a telephone interview. He said, “What happened was that it is just an imaginary something. Because investigation showed that the three suspects are related to the Commissioner for Health himself and two of them are students of that school, of which one of them got admission through the commissioner; so they are related.
I think they just decided to do that to insert fear into him, possibly not minding the consequences. The three people arrested including a lady all live in the same room. The SIM card used was recovered from the room but none of them has owned up on the construction of that text message. Preliminary investigation as of now revealed that they are all related to the person, but we are still investigating”.
