The Mankessim District Magistrate Court has remanded three accused persons, Isaac Osei, 25; John Amissah, 39; and Samuel Ampah, 54; for allegedly lynching a suspected thief at Mankessim Krofu in the Central Region.
They are on remand for a month.
The deceased, Caleb Ocran, is alleged to be part of a gang of four thieves.
The gang is alleged to have engaged in a series of thefts, including stealing goats and farm produce from the members of the community.
However, during their last operation, the other members of the gang managed to escape but the now-deceased suspect was killed.
The police retrieved a phone belonging to one of the suspects from the crime scene.
When the phone was switched on, the suspects called to claim ownership of it and were directed to meet at an agreed location to recover the phone.
They showed up on Wednesday, 25 May 2022 and were arrested by a team of undercover community police officers.
The suspects confessed to the crime upon interrogation by the police.
According to them, their goat was stolen by the deceased and his gang, and all efforts to find them had proven unsuccessful.
They were, therefore, compelled to lynch the deceased when the opportunity presented itself.
They disclosed that the plantain found beside the deceased was a deliberate attempt to make it look like it was the reason for lynching him.
The three are expected to reappear before the court on Friday, 1 July 2022.
Thirty-year-old Caleb Ocran was allegedly stoned to death by his accusers.
The man’s body was found tied to a palm tree with the bunch of plantains beside it.
There were also stones, sticks, cudgels, blocks and other crude weapons scattered around the body.
The weapons were suspected to have been used to lynch him.
The man was reported to have left home on Friday, 6 May 2022 and never returned.
The assembly member and youth of the community, together with the man’s family, therefore, mounted a search for him only to find his body tethered to a palm tree on Saturday, 7 May 2022.
The body was badly bruised.
Confirming the incident, the assemblyman for the area, Mr Cephas Arthur, told Class91.3FM’s Central regional correspondent, Nana Tawiah that the man was the third to have been found dead in the community within a week.
The assembly member, who bemoaned the upsurge in lynching cases linked to theft, indicated that the deceased used to work at a supermarket at Mankessim.
He, however, suspected that he could have been intentionally murdered for some other reason and made to look as if he was lynched for theft.
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