A military officer and six other individuals have been remanded into police custody by a Circuit Court in Accra, for allegedly robbing a fuel tanker carrying about 54,000 litres of diesel, valued at approximately GH¢766,800.
Cpl. Bortey Bernard, a serving soldier at Teaching and Doctrine College of the Ghana Armed Forces, and his accomplices have been charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, abetment, robbery and kidnapping.
The rest are Mark Abito, fuel tanker driver; Ganiu Abdulai, driver; Atiiga Barnabas, unemployed; Awini Ibrahim; Muniru Ayebo and Shaibu Adams, all tanker driver’s mates.
The incident occurred on August 6, 2025, at about 1pm when the accused persons ambushed the tanker driver and took over the vehicle.
The accused had trailed the fuel tanker which was travelling from Tema to Kumasi and intercepted it at Pampaso Number 1, in the Eastern Region, crossed the tanker at gunpoint, forcing the driver to stop abruptly.
They have pleaded not guilty to charges against them and were remanded into police custody by the court, presided over by His Honour Samuel Bright Acquah. They will reappear on August 27, 2025.
Court documents indicate that the accused persons, after stopping the tanker, pulled the driver, Jerry Kawuon, who is the complainant, from the steering wheel, and handcuffed him together with his mate, a witness in the case, and pushed them into a green pickup truck with registration number GX 2881-22.
The soldier’s accomplices then drove the robbed fuel tanker to Pacific Fuel Station at Bunso junction.
The prosecutor, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Emmanuel Haligah told the court that on August 7, 2025, police during a stop and search duty at Ablekuma Borkorborkor snap check point arrested Cpl. Bortey Bernard, who was in a military uniform, after the kidnapped victims in the pickup truck drew the attention of the police who rescued them.
Further investigations led to the arrest of the other accused persons at Bunso Junction, who were caught with a pumping machine in the process of discharging the robbed diesel into an empty fuel tanker with registration number GN 804-13 at the Pacific fuel station located at Bunso junction.
Both fuel tankers have been impounded at the Kyebi Regional MTTD office.
An interrogation revealed that Cpl. Bortey Bernard and his four other accomplices, now at large, hatched the idea to rob the fuel tanker. They then divided themselves into two groups.
The first group did the monitoring on board a Toyota Corolla vehicle from Tema to Pokuase where the soldier armed and in uniform with others on board the pickup truck, trailed the tanker to Pampaso Number 1, where he and his accomplices executed the act.
Cpl. Bortey Bernard, on his arrest, admitted the offence and added that he and his accomplices were driving in town with the complainant and his mate handcuffed earlier, buying time for the diesel to be sold out.
BY Gibril Abdul Razak