Three walk free, re-arrested for theft
POLICE yesterday nearly bungled the cash-in-transit armed robbery case of three men arrested in Fort Beaufort this week after they failed to bring the suspects to court within the stipulated 48hour period.
As a result of their inefficiency, the three suspects could have walked free as their case was momentarily struck off the court roll by Fort Beaufort magistrate Khuselwa Majali, who said the Criminal Procedures Act does not allow for people held in police custody for over 48 hours to be tried in court.
Yesterday morning the three accused, Luthando Klaas, 35, of Fort Beaufort, Thobani Maduduma, 29, of KwaDwesi in Port Elizabeth and Anele Dangala, 32, also from Fort Beaufort, appeared in court for the first time after being arrested on Tuesday afternoon.
The trio were arrested by the Hawks just four hours after a cash van security guard, who was about to load cash into an ATM at a Fort Beaufort SuperSpar store, had been robbed and disarmed.
Yesterday the trio made a brief appearance before Majali who was informed by state prosecutor Nomakhosandile Mguqulwa that they were arrested at 4pm on Tuesday, and thus the 48-hour period in which they were supposed to have appeared in court, lapsed at 4pm on Thursday.
Majali ruled that the three were not in court legally, and thus, she said, she could not proceed with their court hearing.
Majali later struck their case off the court roll, paving the way for their immediate release.
However, when the group walked freely out of court, which had a heavy police presence, the three were re-arrested at the doorsteps of the courtroom.
A verbal exchange between them and police ensured, but eventually they were cuffed and taken back into custody.
Police whisked them to the nearby Fort Beaufort Police Station, where they charged them again, and brought them back to court in the afternoon.
In their brief second appearance yesterday afternoon, Majali postponed their case to May 10 for a bail application.
According to their charge sheet, the three men are facing charges of armed robbery with aggravating circumstances, illegal possession of four firearms, including the one stolen from the security guard on Tuesday, and another one stolen in Port Elizabeth last month.
They also face a charge of being in possession of a stolen vehicle which they used as a getaway car during the Tuesday robbery. The vehicle, a white Renault Clio, was allegedly stolen in Port Elizabeth recently.
The charge sheet also reveals that the three men are accused of stealing five canisters of cash each containing R200 000.
According to police, when the men were arrested at Mndeni village near Healdtown, just four hours after the cash van had been robbed, they were found with a portion of the money.
Their arrest on Tuesday came barely three days after a similar armed heist in nearby Alice CBD where Border mini-cricket coach Sive Hlatuka was shot dead, allegedly by security guards who had thought he was part of an armed gang that had, moments earlier, robbed them of an undisclosed amount of cash at the Kwantu Mall on Saturday.
Hawks provincial spokeswoman Captain Anelisa Feni this week said there was no link between the two incidents. —