Singapore:

An Indian-origin Singaporean bar owner was sentenced to jail for 13 years and four weeks on Monday and will receive nine strokes of the cane for raping a runaway 17-year-old girl after allowing her to work for him.

Raj Kumar Bala, 42, was convicted of a charge each of raping and molesting the victim and pleaded guilty to a third charge of harbouring a runaway under the Children and Young Persons Act, Channel News Asia reported.

Defence lawyer Ramesh Tiwary said his client has asked to be released on bail pending appeal, according to the channel’s report.

The court heard that the victim was 17 in February 2020 when she ran away from the Singapore Girls’ Home.

She found out about a job opportunity at Bala’s Don Bar and Bistro in Dunlop Street in the Little India precinct of hotels, motels and eateries through another runaway who was working there.

The other runaway was also sexually assaulted by Bala in a charge that stood down for the time being.

The victim went down to the bar to interview for the job and met Bala, who described the job duties to her, including serving customers and making drinks.

He offered her the role, saying she could stay at the bar with other runaways.

The victim worked at the bar for a few days, but police received a tip-off about people who absconded and worked there. They raided the place in the early hours of February 22, 2020.

The victim fled with another girl to escape the raid, before being picked up by Bala.

He drove them to his condominium, telling them they could stay there, before drinking alcohol with the girls.

He raped the victim while she was heavily intoxicated and also engaged in sex acts with the other girl.

The victim left the condo and surrendered herself to the home in July 2020, but told her case worker only in August 2020 that she was raped.

Justice Mavis Chionh noted the “considerable personal harm” inflicted on the victim, who blames herself as to how she came to be in an intoxicated state that led to her rape.

Her testimony in court, which was corroborated by her former boyfriend, illustrated how the trauma from her past would be revived in a way that negatively affects her well-being, the judge noted.

She said Bala knew that the victim was young and on the run from police, and she was dependent on him for income and shelter.

Bala faces other pending charges and is yet to make a decision on what he intends to do with them, according to the report.

The bar owner faces 22 more charges relating to five other victims, mainly for sex offences, according to a report by “The Straits Times”. These charges are pending in court.

He is accused of raping and molesting a victim identified in court documents as B1, raping and sexually assaulting a victim identified as B5 and raping, molesting and threatening another victim identified as B6.

He is also accused of sexually penetrating a minor under the age of 16, identified as B7, and molesting and causing alarm to another victim, identified as B8. PTI GS RC

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Singapore:

A 35-year-old Indian origin officer with Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower was jailed for five weeks on Thursday for having asked an ex-colleague from DBS Bank to access the salary information of his colleagues, according to a media report.

Dinath Silvamany Muthaliyar, a Singapore citizen, who asked his former colleague Liong Yan Sin at DBS bank to access the profiles in the database containing information about customers, pleaded guilty to four counts under the Computer Misuse Act, Channel News Asia reported.

Liong had access to the details due to his job as a collections officer, where he attended to queries by bank customers, and spoke to them about outstanding payments and payment plans.

However, Liong was not supposed to disclose or access information outside of the parameters of his duties.

Dinath, too, was a collections officer before joining the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), where he was a levy administration manager.

In June 2018, Dinath asked Liong to help him find out the salary details of colleagues at MOM so that he could compare them with his own.

“The accused wanted to find out his colleagues’ salaries to ascertain his standing in respect of his salary and the difference between his salary and his colleagues’ salaries,” the prosecution said.

Liong agreed and accessed the DBS database to conduct searches between June 2018 and November 2018.

He then disclosed the information to Dinath via WhatsApp. Across all the charges, at least seven colleagues were affected.

The prosecution sought six to seven weeks in jail for Dinath, stating that the culpability of the accused was lower than Liong, as the latter had been in a position of trust when he committed the offence.

Dinath pleaded guilty to four counts under the Computer Misuse Act for abetting Liong to conduct the unauthorised searches and four counts under the Banking Act for abetting Liong to disclose information that he was not authorised to.

Another 14 charges of a similar nature were considered for his sentencing, the report said.

The court heard that both Liong and Dinath had been aware of the rules prohibiting collections officers from disclosing customer information to third parties in an unauthorised manner and that they were not allowed to access customer information outside of their job scope.

Liong had earlier pleaded guilty to similar charges and was sentenced to 16 weeks in jail. Another man, Ang Kok How, who had also asked Liong to illegally obtain an acquaintance’s address, was sentenced to two weeks in jail.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)