Singapore—A district judge meted out a three-week jail sentence on Thursday (Apr 15) to a man who has been throwing his own spit at various women for over a year, according to a Yahoo! Singapore report.
Fifty-six-year-old Alias Talib entered a guilty plea to using criminal force on a woman on Feb 9, 2020.
His victim, a 31-year-old female, was on her way to a lift lobby of a block along Yishun Street 81 when she felt that something warm and wet had hit her back.
When she looked around for the source of the liquid, she saw a man, who turned out to be Alias, leaving the scene.
Later, she found out that he had spit into his hand and hurled it at her.
She filed a police report and, thanks to video footage from police cameras, Alias was identified.
Another charge of throwing spittle at a different woman had been filed against Alias last week, and was taken into consideration for his sentencing. This incident also occurred at a Yishun void deck.
Upon investigation, police determined that Alias had spotted his 31-year-old victim from afar, and began following her without her knowledge. At one point, he spat into his hand and threw the spittle at her while her back was towards him.
Investigations also showed that he has been doing this for more than a year, but always ran away so that he would not caught.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Samyata Ravindran, who noted that luckily enough there were times when the spittle did not hit the intended targets, asked that Alias be jailed for four weeks, especially because during the time when he threw spit at women, the pandemic had already begun and Singapore was experiencing Covid-19 infection clusters.
But Alias, who chose to not be represented by a lawyer in court, said in mitigation that he would be fired if he received a jail sentence.
He added that he has a child in school, who had undergone an operation just that morning.
Moreover, he is his family’s sole breadwinner.
However, according to District Judge John Ng, a prison sentence is warranted in Alias’ case, especially due to the presence of Covid-19 during his offences.
Alias could have ended up in jail for a maximum of three months, been fined as much as $1500, or both, for the offence of using criminal force.
/TISG
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