Swift action by the Nquthu police last week saw the arrest of six men who are believed to have pulled off at least two armed robberies in the area.
The police were conducting an intelligence operation in Nquthu town on Tuesday when they received information of men in the area who were planning to rob a local supermarket.
Six men, travelling in three vehicles, were traced and promptly arrested. Police also recovered a firearm with its serial number filed off. The investigation led police to Katlehong in Gauteng where another man was found in possession of a firearm. He was arrested for being an accomplice of the six suspects.
A total of seven suspects were arrested and charged with possession of unlicensed firearms.
A further investigation linked the suspects to two business robbery incidents that occurred in the Nquthu area and in Osizweni, Newcastle. On July 14, armed men accosted employees at a local bank in Nquthu and made off with an undisclosed amount of cash and fled.
Another robbery was committed at Osizweni where a supermarket was also robbed of an undisclosed amount of cash. Police also discovered that suspects were planning to rob supermarkets in Nquthu and Nkandla. The suspects will be profiled to determine if they can be linked to other business robberies in the country.
The men are to soon appear in Court again on charges of business robbery.
The KwaZulu-Natal Acting Provincial Commissioner, Major General Bheki Langa, welcomed the arrests and commended Nquthu police on their alertness which led to the arrests. “We will make sure that we thoroughly investigate these cases and send well-prepared dockets to court for successful prosecution. These firearms will be subjected to ballistic testing to ascertain if they were used in the commission of any other crime in the country,” he said.