A 45-year-old HDB tenant who sexually assaulted a young girl before collecting her vaginal secretions to make a “love potion” was sentenced to 18 years jail and 24 strokes of the cane yesterday.
The tenant, Malaysian Arshad Dullah who had been working in Singapore as a cleaner, had been living with his victim’s family in their four-room HDB flat since 2012.
Last February, he befriended his landlord’s eight-year-old daughter and plied her with gifts of food, stationery and folded paper boats. The court heard that the man progressed to massaging the child’s arms and shoulders thereafter.
One morning in March 2017, the man asked the girl to follow him into the kitchen where he sexually assaulted her by penetration, before collecting the child’s vaginal secretions in a bottle. Arshad repeated the vile acts later that same day.
Arshad sexually assaulted the young victim again, one month later. When the girl told him that she was hurting, the man covered her mouth and claimed that he was collecting her secretions to make “perfume.”
Two months later, the girl told her mother that she believes the tenant likes her since he gives her gifts. The girl’s mother was shocked to find the terrible acts the tenant had committed, when she probed her daughter further. The victim’s mother promptly lodged a police report and Arshad was arrested.
In the investigations that followed, Arshad claimed that he violated the girl and collected her secretions to make a “love potion”, so that he could endear himself to those around him and to stop his coworkers from bullying him at work.
A psychiatric report produced in court stated that Arshad was “likely to have pedophilic tendencies.”
Arshad pleaded guilty to 3 charges of aggravated sexual assault by penetration. Six other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing.