Thursday September 6, 2012

Reduced –labourer’s rape sentence

PUTRAJAYA: An oil palm collector sentenced to 20 years in jail and 12 strokes of the rotan for raping his 12-year-old daughter has had his punishment reduced by the Court of Appeal here.

The court ordered for the 47-year-old man to be given 15 years in jail and six strokes of the rotan for committing incest on his underage daughter five years ago.

However, the three-member panel, led by Hishamudin Mohd Yunus, dismissed the man’s appeal to set aside his conviction.

Earlier, Hishamudin, who presided with justices Alizatul Khair Osman Khairuddin and Lim Yee Lan, said the original sentence of 20 years and 12 strokes of the rotan meted out by the Malacca Sessions Court was “manifestly excessive”.

The man had been found guilty by the court on Nov 6, 2009 on two counts of incest committed on his daughter, aged 12 years and four months then, at a house in Kesang Tua, Jasin, at about 10pm on Aug 21 and again at 9.30pm on Aug 26 in 2007.

He was given 20 years in jail and 12 strokes of the rotan for each count. The term was to run concurrently.

According to the statements of the case, the girl, who had been staying with her father along with her five siblings after her mother ran away from home, had woken up in her room to find her father near her.

When she asked him what he wanted, the man told her to be silent and even threatened to slap her if she made any noise. He then raped her.

After she was raped the second time, the girl told a friend about the incident and ran away from home to stay with another friend.

The next day, she called her mother, who was working in a school canteen, to fetch her.

When her mother and employer came to fetch her in a car, she told them that she had been raped.

The mother later took the girl to see a teacher at the school where she was working. The teacher subsequently reported the incident to another teacher at the girl’s school.

Both later helped the girl to lodge a police report. — Bernama

News

Thursday September 6, 2012

Reduced –labourer’s rape sentence