The Benue State Police Command has arrested two women for allegedly staging a fake kidnapping scheme to extort money from a family.
The command’s spokesperson, DSP Peter Aondongu, disclosed this in a statement issued on Wednesday and made available to journalists in Makurdi.
According to Aondongu, one of the suspects, identified as Mary Torkuma, who resides in Akpehe, Makurdi, left her home on July 12, 2026, to visit a friend, Miss Evergreen Samuel, at North Bank, a suburb of the state capital.
The police spokesperson said the two women allegedly conspired to deceive Torkuma’s family into paying a ransom by falsely claiming that she had been abducted.
The statement read in part, “On 15th July 2026, a report was received by the Command’s Violence Crime Response Unit, Makurdi, that one Miss Mary Torkuma of Akpehe, Makurdi, had left her apartment on 12th July 2026 to visit a friend in the North Bank area of Makurdi.
