Vereeniging - A 27-year-old man has been convicted in the Vereeniging Magistrates' Court and sentenced to 13 years imprisonment for theft of diesel and tampering with essential infrastructure, the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), commonly known as the Hawks, in Gauteng said on Saturday.
Batsarai Chimutanga, 27, was arrested in March this year by officers of the Hawks serious organised crime investigation unit at a maize farm in the Kliprivier area, Hawks Gauteng spokesperson Captain Ndivhuwo Mulamu said in a statement.
"The investigation team had received intelligence [information] about unknown men who were seen tampering with the Transnet fuel pipeline at Greenland maize farm," Mulamu said.
When police officers arrived on the scene they found Chimutanga driving a white Renault truck loaded with a number of containers filled with stolen diesel. He was arrested and the truck and the stolen diesel, worth about R300,000, were seized.
The court sentenced Chimutanga to 13 years imprisonment, but with three years suspended for five years. The Asset Forfeiture Unit (AFU) was in the process of applying for a preservation order regarding the forfeiting of the truck, Mulamu said.
African News Agency (ANA)