Alarge crowd is expected to gather at the premises of the Circuit Court in Bolgatanga, capital of Ghana’s Upper East Region, today, a market day, to see the faces of three men who reportedly belong to an armed robbery gang that created a climate of fear for years in the region.
Police arrested four suspects on Tuesday, 5 May 2026, during an intelligence-led operation. But only three of the four-man gang will face trial because one of them, Amadu Rahman, is dead.
The suspect collapsed while a search was being conducted during the police operation at Gban to retrieve weapons from them, according to a statement from the Ghana Police Service.
He was rushed to the Upper East Regional Hospital in Bolgatanga, where he was pronounced dead on arrival. His body was deposited at the hospital’s morgue for preservation and autopsy.
Gban (also spelt Gbane) is a gold-mining community in Talensi, a district in the region.
The gang subjected the mining community and parts of the Upper East Region and the next-door North East Region to persistent terror for years until Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) John Ferguson Dzineku took charge recently and intervened as the Upper East Regional Police Commander.
Development watchers say the new regional police commander, who is also a lawyer, has enhanced the image of the police in the region since he arrived in the middle of 2025 and has won “thousands of hearts already” for the police because “he has been proactive, fair and firm” so far.
Suspects’ Confessions after the Reign of Terror
The gang, according to police investigations, travelled from Yagaba, a community in the North East Region, through Fumbisi, capital of Builsa South, a district in the Upper East Region, to Gban on Monday, 4 May 2026, for another armed robbery operation.
They attacked residents that day, hijacking four motorbikes and taking several mobile phones from the victims at gunpoint.
Police say the suspects, following their capture, confessed during interrogation that they were responsible for several armed robbery attacks in both Upper East and North East regions.
The gang also said it carried out a raid on a popular mobile phone shop in Bolgatanga, owned by Viikandi Investment. A video of that raid, showing the attackers wielding an AK-47 assault rifle, went so viral that the incident has remained a subject of public conversation to this day, since Saturday, 22 March 2025.
“During interrogation,” the police statement said, “the suspects admitted to a series of robberies within the Talensi District, along the Yagaba-Fumbisi Road and the Yagaba-Nanguruma Road in the North East Region.”
The statement added: “They further admitted to multiple robberies at Gbane mining sites, where gold and large sums of money were taken from victims.”
The suspects, now consisting of only Abdulai Ibrahim, Adu Yakubu and Amadu Sulemana, who is also known as Saaga, later led police to a farm near Biung, a community close to Gban, where the now-deceased gang leader, Amadu Rahman, had buried an AK-47 rifle.
“A search of the area led to the retrieval of the rifle, with serial number 68100563, and eighty-seven (87) rounds of live ammunition hidden in a fertiliser sack,” said the statement.
Source: Edward Adeti/Media Without Borders/mwbonline.org/Ghana/West Africa
