A High Court in Wa has sentenced two persons each to 15 years imprisonment in hard labuor after they were found guilty of robbery.

The court presided over by his lordship Justice Kwasi Boakye found the duo Fataw Abdul Rahman alias Awuche and Kamal Iddrisu guilty of attempted robbery.

They were said to have inflicted cutlass wounds on their victim, Zachariah Abdullai in a desperate attempt to rob him. The victim was said to have lost the pinna of his ear in the attack.

Kamal Iddrisu escaped and was tried in abstention.

The prosecutor, an assistant state attorney Saeed Abdul Shakur said on January 19, 2014, the victim who is a forty year old employee of the Ghana Health Service was returning home from Kumasi when the two accused persons Fataw Abdul Rahman and Kamal Iddrisu pounced on him outside the Wa Kejetia and demanded that he released all personal effects to them.

The victim refused and a fight was said to have ensued.

Mr. Saeed said the marauding armed robbers inflicted cutlass wounds on his head and the right pinna of the ear and fled the area leaving the victim sprawling on the ground with his bag intact.

The victim was reported to have recognised one of his attackers, as Fataw Abdul Rahman, a distant relative. He then picked a taxi to the Wa regional hospital where doctors stitched the wounds and later reported the case to the Wa Police.

The police quickly moved in to arrest the suspect but the accomplice was still on the run.

The suspect who pleaded not guilty to the charges was however found guilty after trial.

Handing out the sentence, the presiding judge Justice Kwasi Boakye took into consideration, the intrinsic seriousness of the offence, the degree of revulsion felt by law abiding citizens of the society and the country as a whole.

He also catalogued litany of recent robbery cases that occurred in the region and at the Bole-Bomboi highway the past couple of weeks.

He added that the impunity with which these crimes are committed is quite incomprehensible and found the offences of the accused person too grave.

He said such a person should not have the protection of the country’s courts and handed maximum sentences to the two.

Prior to the sentence, the accused pleaded with the court to be lenient with him since he had a child and a father who was sick and bedridden.

The court sentenced each of the accused persons to five years imprisonment on count one and 15 years imprisonment in hard labour each on count two to run concurrently.

He however issued a bench warrant for the arrest of the second accused person which shall commence his sentence from the date of his arrest.