Corpun file 3944

Straits Times, Singapore, 4 July 1999

Two jailed for bringing in illegals

TWO men who used a private bus to smuggle in 20 illegal immigrants were each jailed a total of eight years yesterday and will be given 24 strokes of the cane each.

Parthipan Saminathan, 36, a lorry driver, and Paramasivam Bengan, 29, a storekeeper, admitted engaging in human trafficking.

They had faced 20 charges of conveying illegal immigrants through the Woodlands checkpoint on Thursday by hiding them under the floor board of the bus. The prosecution went on 13 charges against them.

The two Malaysians were each given the minimum two years' jail and three strokes of the cane for each charge. Seven other charges were considered in sentencing.

District Judge Wong Sheng Kwai ordered four of the sentences to run consecutively.

Immigration prosecutor Tng Kim Choon said immigration officers found 19 men and a woman squeezed tightly in a secret compartment when they opened the vehicle's sliding trap door at about 9 pm that day. Among them were 13 Thais who had paid a Thai agent to smuggle them into Singapore to get jobs. They had left Haadyai, Thailand, on June 30 and stayed overnight in Johor Baru.

The next evening, the illegals were taken to the bus by Parthipan and Paramasivam, who were accompanied by an unidentified man. Investigations showed that the unknown man had recruited the two in Johor Baru to bring in the illegals. Parthipan was promised RM20 (S$9) for each person taken across illegally while Paramasivam was to be given RM100 for each trip.

Pressing for a stiff sentence, Mr Tng said the two had made it possible for syndicates to profit from human trafficking.

Such an offence, he added, was hard to detect and the cost was heavy because of the disruptions to travellers at the Causeway.

The two men could have been jailed for up to five years and caned on each charge.

Corpun file 3972

Straits Times, Singapore, 10 July 1999

Jailed for stealing bins

By Karen Wong

A MAN who stole 11 rubbish bins, from the Orchard Road and Esplanade areas, was yesterday jailed for 18 months and ordered to be given six strokes of the cane.

Lum Chee Kai, 38, unemployed, admitted two charges of vandalism in a district court yesterday. Another 12 charges were also taken into consideration.

Before passing sentence, District Judge Adrian Soon said that the bins were provided by the Environment Ministry so that Singapore would be kept clean.

He said to Lum: "By stealing the bins, your act undermines their efforts."

He also noted that the bins cost a "sizeable sum" of $12,000.

Lum was ambushed and caught red-handed in front of Orchard MRT station, by an ambush party, in the early hours of May 24 this year.

He was putting a bin on a cart which was fixed to his tricycle.

He had stolen five bins and two bin covers from the Orchard Road area between May 3 and 24.

He had also stolen six rubbish bins and a cover in the Esplanade area last October.

None of the bins or covers stolen earlier were recovered. It is believed that they were sold.

Pleading for leniency, Lum, who did not have a lawyer, said that he was in financial difficulties. His wife was mentally abnormal and his 16-year-old son was being cared for by social welfare.

He could have been jailed for up to three years or fined up to $2,000.

Caning of up to eight strokes is mandatory in cases of vandalism.

Copyright © 1999 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

Corpun file 3970

Straits Times, Singapore, 14 July 1999

Rape teens get jail and cane

The trio, all minors at the time of the offences, gang-raped and molested the ex-girlfriend of their common friend

By Lim Seng Jin

THREE teenage boys who gang-raped a 14-year-old girl and forced her to perform oral sex on them were sentenced to jail and caning by the High Court yesterday. The trio cannot be named as they were all minors at the time they committed the offences. Two were 15 and the other was 14 years old.

One of the 15-year-olds, a vocational institute student, and the 14-year-old, a Secondary 3 student, also molested the girl.

And when the 14-year-old was remanded at the Singapore Boys' Home on charges of assaulting the girl sexually, he forced a 14-year-old boy there to masturbate him and perform oral sex on him last November. Judicial Commissioner Choo Han Teck gave him the stiffest sentence of five years' jail and eight strokes of the cane, telling him that he had been "the most culpable and the most unruly of the three".

The two 15-year-olds were sentenced to three years' jail and five strokes each.

The victim is the ex-girlfriend of a boy known to them. On July 21 last year, he told the trio and two girls, aged 14 and 16, that she had left him for another boy.

The three boys decided to rape the girl "to teach her a lesson", said Deputy Public Prosecutor Raymond Fong. The next day, the five waited for the girl outside her school in Woodlands. They said her ex-boyfriend wanted to meet her and took her to the English College, an abandoned school at Woodlands Street 13, where all three took turns to rape her. After they spent the night at a vacant bungalow near Woodlands bus interchange, the victim was blindfolded taken to a Woodlands flat.

The 16-year-old girl and another girlfriend tricked the boys into letting her leave. The victim later reported the sexual attacks to the police.

The trio's parents declined to be interviewed. The father of one of the 15-year-olds said in Malay: "I feel like collapsing."

TOO UNRULY FOR DETENTION

A MINOR can be sent to jail if the High Court is satisfied that he is so unruly he cannot be kept in a place of detention or an approved school.

This is provided for under the Children and Young Persons Act, which also states that only the High Court has the power to sentence minors to corporal punishment.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Raymond Fong had urged Judicial Commissioner Choo Han Teck to invoke this part of the Act yesterday to jail the three teenage boys and have them caned.

Copyright © 1999 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. All rights reserved.

Corpun file 4028

Straits Times, Singapore, 24 July 1999

16 years' jail for rape of tourist

Stall assistant also found guilty of abducting Australian; his friend gets one-year term for molest

By Lim Seng Jin

THE trial of the two men accused of raping and molesting an Australian woman tourist ended yesterday with one of them convicted of kidnap and rape, and the other found guilty of molest.

The High Court sentenced Muhammad Rahmatullah Maniam Abdullah, 32, a Malaysian stall assistant here, to a total of 16 years' jail and the maximum 24 strokes of the cane for kidnapping and raping the 34-year-old tourist, who is a social worker.

He had also made her perform oral sex on him in his Bukit Batok flat early on Nov 24 last year. His friend, Abdul Rahman Ameer Hamsha, 29, an unemployed Indian national, was sentenced to a year's jail for molesting the woman in the same flat that morning by touching her breast.

But Justice Kan Ting Chiu cleared the latter of a charge of restraining the woman wrongfully when she tried to leave the flat later.

He doubted the woman's evidence on this point because she had failed to mention the restraint to police at the rape scene, bringing it up only later in her statement.

Rahmatullah had kidnapped her hours after meeting her in Desker Road in Little India.

She had arrived the day before with a friend, a 40-year-old Australian woman and also a social worker.

The woman got separated from her friend, who had alleged that she herself was molested by Rahmatullah's friend, Perichi Periyasamy.

Yesterday, Justice Kan rejected Rahmatullah's claim that the two women had asked him where they could buy cannabis, and that the younger had agreed to have sex with him for $300.

He noted that the 34-year-old social worker had a "respectable background" -- she was married and gainfully employed, and was here on holiday with her friend before going on to Malaysia.

Said the judge: "Against this backdrop, I find it incredible that the complainant would agree to have sex with Rahmatullah for $300, and leave her friend to fend for herself."

He gave Rahmatullah 12 years' jail and the minimum 12 strokes of the cane on each of two rape charges, four years' jail for unnatural sex and two years' jail for abducting the woman.

He ordered the jail term for unnatural sex to run consecutively with that for one of the rape charges, and the others to be concurrent.

It was said in mitigation yesterday that Rahmatullah has seven children, aged between two and 12 years old, and that Abdul Rahman has three children, the youngest four months old. Both their families are in India.

Both are first offenders and said they would appeal.