Do you know that you can steal your own property? Theft is a common offence and usually understood to involve the taking of someone else's property without permission. The law however does not make a distinction between ownership and possession and theft is defined as dishonestly taking any movable property out of the possession of any person without that person's consent.
In law therefore, if I send my car to the workshop for it to repaired and then simply take it away without paying the repair charges, I am committing theft. The workshop has legal possession of the car at the time even though I have ownership. Therefore to remove it out of the possession of the workshop is theft.
It is not theft if I ask my friend to send the car to the workshop but instead he sells the car. He was in lawful possession of the car but by selling it, he is committing a criminal breach of trust. Similarly, if a person finds a diamond bracelet lying on a public road, by taking it he is not committing theft since it was not in anyone’s possession. If however, he simply keeps it without trying to find its owner or handing the bracelet to the police, he is committing criminal misappropriation of property.
Under the law, simple theft is punishable with imprisonment for up to 3 years. More serious forms of theft such as theft from a building or theft by a servant attract a more severe penalty which is imprisonment for up to 7 years.
Another aggravated form of theft is robbery. Robbery occurs when theft is accompanied by violence or threat of violence. The violence or threat must be in order to commit theft. If a thief pushes a person to the ground in order to take the victim's wallet, then that is robbery. If however he pickpockets the wallet from the victim but later kicked him "for fun", then that is not robbery because the violence was not inflicted to commit the theft. He can however still be charged for theft and causing hurt. Robbery is punishable with a maximum of 30 years' imprisonment and mandatory whipping. If a weapon is used, there is a minimum sentence of 7 years' imprisonment and 12 strokes of whipping. Incidentally a lot of people had gone into trouble for their aggressive tactics in debt collection. Remember that though you are entitled to be paid, you cannot "persuade" the debtor to make payment by force. Otherwise, instead of being paid, you have to pay a lawyer to defend you on a charge of extortion or robbery.
