According to a Twitter user with the handle @Kofi_Seven who posted videos of the incident on his page, the alleged thief was not beaten after being caught stealing electric cables.
The alleged thief, he said begged his captors not to beat him, explaining he was a musician and only engaged in the thievery due to hunger.
“He was caught stealing electric cables this night. After being caught, he told them not to beat him because he’s a musician and has got the talent but ended up doing for the first time because of hunger,” @Kofi_Seven captioned one of the videos of the suspect.
Well, luckily for him, he was spared the beatings and rather made to sweep the surrounding, take a bath and sing to the pleasure of the residents.
A woman is heard is heard in one of the videos saying in local dialect Twi that the alleged thief was caught red-handed, and he decided to entertain them to avoid beatings.
A uniformed police officer is also seen appearing behind the suspect, playfully attempting to slap him from behind while he was singing a romantic song.
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“They didn’t beat the thief but rather made him bath. Now they made him showed his talent.
“May God bless these police officers who caught this thief. They never beat or locked him up but rather gave him food. May him showed his musical talent. It’s really sad, he went to steal cables just because he was hungry.”
Although @Kofi_Seven did not disclose when and where the incident happened in Ghana, thieves have been subjected to more lenient instant justice these days.
It was residents of Takoradi who appear to be brazing the trail in the new method of dealing with suspected criminals by making them work for the communities they are arrested in amidst public shaming.
They claimed that they do not trust the police anymore because when they hand over suspects to them, they end up in the communities without the police following up on the cases.
Although this method of punishing thieves and other criminals seems to be more lenient than lynching them as has always been the case, it may equally be illegality.
A suspect remains a suspect until pronounced guilty by a competent court f jurisdiction after a proper trial, so meting out any form of extrajudicial punishment to anyone suspected of a crime, be it severe or less severe could be an afront to the laws of Ghana.