A woman who wounded her hand to claim an insurance cover of Sh 52 million and a handsome stipend now faces 8 years in prison after police investigations revealed it wasn’t an accident.
The Slovenian 21-year-old and a relative have been detained for attempted fraud, police said on Monday.
Both the woman and her relative, 29, face up to eight years in prison for those charges.
A police spokesman Valter Zrinski told a news conference: “With one of her accomplices, she intentionally amputated her hand at the wrist with a circular saw, hoping to stage it as an accident.”
The woman is believed to have staged the incident, together with three relatives.
This allegedly happened earlier this year shortly after the group signed life and injury insurance contracts with five different insurance companies.
At first, four were arrested, but two were released.
The woman was hoping to get around Sh43 million of compensation, say police.
They add that she also hoped for a life-long monthly payout of sum Sh 337,000.
The group intentionally left the hand behind rather than bringing it with them to the hospital.
It was hoped that they would receive three times higher compensation for permanent disability, police said.
However authorities managed to pick up the hand in time, and doctors in a hospital in the capital Ljubljana managed to sew it back on, Zrinski said.