Court jails porter for stealing soya beans

Nkoranza Magistrate court presided by Mr. Justice Emmanuel K. Boadu has sentenced a 22 year-old potter, Kwasi Appiah, to six months imprisonment for stealing a half-bag of soya beans.

Prosecuting, Chief Inspector Kingsley Asare told the court that, at about 0930 hours on June 2, Venerable Peter Kwadwo Sakyi, a retired Anglican Minister at Nkoranza reported to the local police that someone had broken into his room and stolen the item.

Chief Inspector Asare said whilst taking the complainant’s statement, Lance-Corporal Appiah Korang came to the Nkorana Police Station with the convict suspected to be involved in a stealing case.

The prosecutor said L/Cpl Korang narrated he was on a visit to a friend at Sessiman, also a suburb of Nkoranza when he saw Appiah negotiating to sell the soya beans in a suspicious manner.

He arrested Appiah and upon interrogation, he confessed having stolen half bag of soya beans from the residence of the retired Anglican priest at the proposed site of Anglican University of Technology, at the Point Four area of Nkoranza.

The prosecutor said Venerable Sakyi had earlier reported similar theft cases at his residence, including four bags of cement, four bags of maize and a number of fowls.

Justice Boadu in passing sentence expressed surprise at the convict's statement that he wanted to sell the beans to get funds to travel to Libya.

He expressed surprise that some youth at Nkoranza had started going back to Libya in spite of the crises in that country and advised the unemployed youth to toil to earn a decent living rather than stealing.**