Imo State Police Command has uncovered a church used as a baby factory along the MCC/Uratta Road.
The police stormed the Jesus Life Assembly church on Thursday after the tactical unit received intel regarding a citizen, Amarachi Okechukwu Dioku.
The 18-year-old girl from Umudurualaoka in Mbaitoli Local Government Area was reported missing on May 23 2021, by her parents.
The teenager was recently sighted on the premises of the church, located in an isolated area near School Garden in Owerri North LGA.
Commissioner of Police, Rabiu Hussaini, dispatched the anti-kidnapping unit to raid the location where the prime suspect, Evangelist Ugochi Orisakwe, 47, was found.
Ugochi was arrested alongside her gang members, Chidi Orisakwe, 34, Pauline Nwagbunwanne, 42, Elizabeth Uzoma, 61, and Chibueze Joy, 31.
Amarachi Dioku was rescued unhurt with five-month-old pregnancy and taken to a government hospital for treatment and was thereafter reunited with her parents.
During interrogation, Evangelist Ugochi confessed she had been using the church as a place where young girls are kept and impregnated.
She told detectives that after delivery, the girls are paid off and their babies sold to rich and childless clients.
“An investigation is ongoing and efforts are on to arrest other members of the syndicate who are on the run,” the Imo State Police Command noted.
