He posed as police officer to molest two young girls

BY LEE TEE JONG

PARTHIBAN: Junior college dropout

I'M AN officer from Bedok Police Station, he said.

Not once, but twice.

He wasn't.

That lie was bad enough by itself.

But what Parthiban R Kandasamy used that lie for was far worse.

He molested two teenage girls. Twice in three months.

Parthiban, a 23-year-old full-time national serviceman, committed his first outrage on Jan 5, 2000.

In the void deck of an HDB block in Tampines, where he approached a 14-year-old girl.

Claiming that he was a Criminal Investigation Department officer from the Bedok police, Parthiban flashed a black wallet at the girl and said he wanted to check her schoolbag for cigarettes.

He found none.

And then told the scared girl to face away, with her back to him and her hands on the wall.

The girl did as she was told.

Parthiban then patted her body, her breasts and her genital region.

That was the first outrage.

This April, in a multi-storey car park in Tampines, he stopped a 15-year-old girl.

I'm Inspector Rahim from Bedok Police Station, he said, and began chatting with her as they sat down.

Then Parthiban reached across and pulled down the girl's shorts.

Shocked, the girl tried to pull them back up and fell over.

While on the floor, Parthiban molested her, and finally stopped only when she pleaded with him.

With two reports filed against him with the police - the first on Jan 5 and the second on April 11 - Parthiban was later arrested.

He faced 12 charges.

The prosecution proceeded with five charges while seven were taken into consideration.

During the mitigation plea, Parthiban's lawyer said that he had been at the top of his class in Tamil while at secondary school, and earned his teachers' praise.

But family problems led Parthiban to drop out of junior college, he added.

In court, Parthiban received his sentence poker-faced.

Yeo Chong Meng

Tan Siew Fong

For possession of an offensive weapon, Yeo could have been jailed up to three years and given at least six strokes of the cane.

The wild life turned couple into desperadoes

BY CHUA WEI YNG

THEY were low-life living the wild life.

The drugs and booze made sure of that.

But one day, Tan Siew Fong and her husband Anthony Yeo Chong Meng, went too far.

Intoxicated on beer and stoned out on sleeping pills, the desperate duo needed money for yet another fix.

And to get it, they decided to rob a couple at knifepoint in March this year.

They got fixed, all right - but it wasn't the way they had hoped it would be.

The police made sure of that and they are now behind bars.

For Tan, 36, it was an unglamorous interlude to a high-flying life.

The former SIA stewardess had started flying as soon as she finished her O levels at Rangoon Secondary School.

But she gave it up seven years later to become a secretary.

She then married Yeo who was nine years her junior and a drug addict with a record.

It didn't bother Tan. Together, they were out drinking almost every night.

But the newfound lifestyle left Tan with sleeping problems. So Yeo passed her some sleeping pills, which he was also taking.

Slowly, she became addicted to the drug - just like her husband.

Tan's monthly salary of $800 was not enough to support her unemployed husband and their expensive drug habit.

Craving for more, they visited a clinic along East Coast Road on March 29 this year.

After buying 10 sleeping pills, Yeo and her husband took five each and washed it down with beer at a nearby coffeeshop.

When both were sufficiently high, Yeo then suggested they rob somebody.

TOOK OUT A KNIFE

At about 4.30 am, the couple approached Mr Chan Thian Kwee and his girlfriend at East Coast Park.

Yeo asked Mr Chan, 35, for a lighter.

While his victim was fumbling for one, Yeo suddenly wrapped one beefy arm around his neck and took out a knife.

He told a stunned Mr Chan in Hokkien that it was a robbery.

Tan, standing nearby, chipped in and added: "Don't move, he has a knife."

But Mr Chan struggled, broke free and yelled for help.

Yeo and Tan took to their heels and disappeared into the night.

Mr Chan called the police who arrested the couple along Bedok South Avenue 1 less than 30 minutes later.

Last week, both of them pleaded guilty in court.

Cunning

'The unfortunate victim was terrorised from the very first day of her employment in the accused's flat. He had the audacity to telephone his wife to complain that the new maid refused to strip. Even if he deliberately mispronounced "strip" to sound like "sweep", it would still show what a shameless cunning man he was.' - Judicial Commissioner Tay Yong Kwang, on Loo's play on words

Unremorseful

'Having been let off by his maid for the earlier instances of outrage of modesty, the unappreciative and unremorseful accused nevertheless progressed to more intrusive molestation of her body and this culminated in the rape on Valentine's Day.' - JC Tay