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A 30-year-old driver has been convicted by the District Utility Court in Accra of conspiring with three others to steal and dismantle a transformer belonging to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).

Kwame Ayamga has been standing trial for close to three months while his other three accomplices are at large.
The police have since been hunting for the three led by a man identified only as Red.

The court, presided over by Mr Worlanyo Kotoku, convicted Ayamga on his plea to two counts of conspiracy to commit crime to wit stealing and causing unlawful damage to the property of the ECG.

Facts of the case

Prosecuting, the Manager in charge of Prosecutions at the ECG, Mr Paul Assibi Abariga, told the court that Ayamga was arrested at about 6:45 a.m. on January 17, 2016 by a team of personnel from the National Highway Patrol Unit.

He said the team, which was on its routine duties, had a tip-off that a gang suspected to have stolen some items were discharging and concealing them at a spot behind the Accra Mall, near the Tetteh Quarshie Roundabout.

He said three members of the gang bolted on seeing the police but Ayamga was arrested at the scene with copper cables, cutters and spanners in his possession.

In the course of investigations, Mr Abariga said it was established that the gang had dismantled an ECG 22 KV transformer at Piabo, near Pokuase, in the Ga West municipality.

They are said to have damaged the transformer and extracted the copper cables from it.

During interrogation, he said Ayamga told the police he was introduced to the crime by the leader of the gang whom he could only identify as Red but could not provide the details of the other gang members.

Sentence

The court, therefore, convicted him to one-day imprisonment and bonded him to be of good behaviour for the next one year or in default face a three-year imprisonment.

Ayamga, however, was released after 2 p.m. in accordance with the law, which stipulates that persons convicted for a day sit in the court until proceedings end or they are detained by the case manager or investigator until 2 p.m.

Before pronouncing judgement, Mr Kotoku said he had taken into consideration the fact that the accused person had spent almost three months in police custody.