Crime prevention police officers in Newlands East in Durban have arrested two men, aged 25 and 45, for the alleged theft of copper cables, KwaZulu-Natal police said on Saturday.
“Members were conducting their crime prevention duties in the area to curb crime when they spotted a Nissan bakkie parked on the roadside. Next to the said vehicle, there was a man who was allegedly digging up a trench,” Lt-Col Thulani Zwane said.
“Out of curiosity, members stopped to conduct investigations as to whether those people were doing legitimate work. These people had no form of identification and could not say the name of the company they worked for. The members searched the bakkie and found 17 metres of cut led cables. Members went on to check the dug up trench and noticed an exposed cable fastened with a chain wrench around it. They also found a pickax and a spade nearby,” he said.
The area in which the men were working was cordoned off with red tape, as if they were doing official work. They confirmed to the police that they were not municipal employees but still could not say why they were digging up the cable. A Telkom official called by police identified the cable as belonging to Telkom and confirmed that the men were not employees and that they had no authority to dig up the cables.
The men were arrested and detained at Newlands East police station. They would appear in the Newlands Magistrate’s Court Monday on charges of theft of copper cables.
In a separate incident, a man was also arrested last week for copper cable theft in Centre Road in Newlands West. Sipho Zulu, 30, was found by police burning 25kg of copper cable in the bush and was arrested. He appeared in the Newlands Magistrate’s Court on November 18 and was remanded in custody until November 28, Zwane said.
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