- Illustrative photo.
SINGAPORE: A paralegal lied to a High Court judge that a lawyer he was working for could not attend a court hearing because the lawyer was at a clinic.
In fact, both the lawyer and the paralegal were together in the latter’s flat at the time.
Prem Kumar Rasapa, who was then a paralegal, attended the hearing in February 2022 via video-conferencing and sought a four-week adjournment for a case involving several inmates who were on death row.
On Friday (Nov 8), the 38-year-old Singaporean man was sentenced to six months and six weeks’ jail after he pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including giving false information to a public servant.
Three of the charges were for assault. In unrelated incidents, Prem assaulted several people, including his own mother, in 2023.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Phoebe Tan said that in 2022, L.F. Violet Netto was the lawyer for several death row inmates who were earlier convicted of drug trafficking.
Without revealing details, DPP Tan said that the inmates’ case involved their third application to set aside their death sentences.
She added that Netto did not turn up for a High Court hearing over the case on Feb 17, 2022.
The prosecutor said that Prem then attended the proceedings remotely through video-conferencing and lied to Justice Kannan Ramesh that Netto was at a clinic.
DPP Tan said: “He informed Justice Ramesh on at least three occasions that Netto had Covid-19, when this was untrue and he had no basis to think she had.
“The accused repeatedly (said) that he was a paralegal who could not address the court, and sought a four-week adjournment... Although the accused’s lie was eventually discovered that day, the hearing was still adjourned to Feb 28, 2022.”
Court documents stated that the police later confronted Prem over his lies, but he still insisted that he was being truthful during the hearing.
Netto died in October 2024.
In an unrelated incident that took place in January 2023, Prem shoved his brother’s 71-year-old friend, causing the senior citizen to fall backwards. The victim was later found with multiple injuries including fractures to his spine.
Court documents did not disclose the reasons behind this assault.
A month after he pushed the elderly man, Prem was at Sengkang General Hospital for undisclosed reasons when he punched a female staff nurse’s left arm as she was about to pass him his medication.
In April that year, his 60-year-old mother, who did not live with him, went to his home and reminded him to go for his follow-up appointment at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), where he was receiving treatment for alcohol use disorder.
Prem refused to go there and instead, asked his mother for money to buy alcohol.
The woman then left the flat and Prem followed her out.
When the pair were travelling to IMH in a taxi, he punched his mother’s cheek once.
He also flung a padlock at her but she managed to dodge it. The padlock struck items including the front windscreen of the taxi, causing more than S$2,400 in damages.
In August 2023, Prem went to Tan Tock Seng Hospital for reasons not stated in court documents.
A female staff member who was handling his registration asked him some questions, but he failed to respond.
“The accused suddenly jumped out from his trolley bed, took a wrist tag printing machine and threw it towards the victim’s direction”, DPP Tan said.
“The victim jumped out of the way and fortuitously dodged the machine.”
Prem also abused the female employee with vulgar language, the court heard.
Court documents did not state what happened next but he was later arrested on April 3, 2024. - The Straits Times/ANN
