Mallam Fatau Dakwariya, the man who could allegedly change two snakes believed to be Kofi Adjei and Kwame Tetteh back into their human form, has been granted bail after being incarcerated for about two weeks.
The court upheld the pleadings of his counsel, Mr. Nkrabeah Effah-Dartey, that the offence for which he is standing trial was bailable.
The court, presided over by Justice Ivy Heward Mills, granted him a GH�10,000 bail with two sureties and an order to report himself to the police once a week till he re-appears on October 7, 2009.
The accused person has pleaded not guilty to the offence of publication of false news with intent to cause fear and alarm to the public.
The prosecuting officer, ASP A.A. Annor, told the court that the complainant in the case is a Ghanaian journalist who logged on to the internet for human interest stories on July 24 and found a story about four men whose desire for riches had led them to the shrine of one Nana Ogya at Aburi New-Town in the Eastern Region.
The story said two of the four men had turned into snakes while the other two, Filco and Yaw Goro, had become deaf and dumb. The complainant followed-up on the story, which had received a lot of media attention, but realized the information was untrue.
He then reported the matter to the police, for which investigation conducted disclosed that there was no fetish priest in Aburi called Nana Ogya neither was there a suburb of Aburi called Aburi New-Town.
It was also discovered that the two boys, Yaw Goro and Filco, were farm labourers for one Joe Tapolie, a native of Sakyikrom also in the Eastern Region, and had trapped the snakes on their farm.
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