A previous animal cruelty offender has shown his true colours once more. On Wednesday, January 9, Krishnasamy Kaliyappan was fined a hefty $16,000 after being convicted by the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) of “causing unnecessary pain and suffering to animals”. His crime – throwing the family cat and kitten out of a window of his third-floor flat in 2017. Previously, Kaliyappan had already been found guilty of animal cruelty in 2012, when he threw two dogs out of the window of his flat as well.
As first reported by Yahoo! News Singapore, Kaliyappan pleaded guilty to two counts of animal cruelty on Wednesday, January 9. The State Courts then fined the 50-year-old a total of $16,000 for animal cruelty crimes under the Animals and Birds Act. As part of his punishment, he was also disallowed from owning a pet for the duration of one year. If unable to pay the entire fine, Kaliyappan will have to serve eight weeks in prison.
Kaliyappan is no stranger to the courts, specifically for animal cruelty acts. In 2012, he was slapped with a $5,000 fine for throwing his son’s two dogs out of a bedroom window of the family flat, just because they had been barking at a food delivery man. Kaliyappan had been drinking at the time. Unable to pay the fine back then, Kaliyappan served five weeks in jail. Miraculously, the dogs were relatively unharmed.
This time, it was the family’s cats who suffered at Kaliyappan’s hands. He and his wife had three cats – two adults and one little kitten. Their animal-loving son had rescued the cats from the streets, but Kaliyappan’s wife was the one taking care of them at their HDB apartment in Boon Lay.
The details of the incident are as follows: On July 1, 2017, Kaliyappan’s wife went to sleep early, just past 8PM, after Kaliyappan went out to go drinking.
Later on, somewhere between 12AM to 12:30AM on July 2, 2017, Kaliyappan came home in a drunken state. For no fathomable reason, he threw one of the big cats and the kitten out of the kitchen window.
The act of cruelty was witnessed by passerby Muhamad Ilham (name courtesy of Yahoo! News Singapore), who just happened to be walking home when he saw the cat being thrown down. The cat, who seemed uninjured, ran away and never came back.
As if that were not shocking enough, Ilham saw a kitten flying out of the same third-floor window. He then called the police.
The little kitten survived with a minor cut to its right hind leg. A resident from the same block adopted the kitten, and the police transferred the case to the AVA.
Perhaps the most outrageous thing about this incident is that Kaliyappan claims to like animals. He had begged the judge for a more lenient sentence, maintaining that he was drunk at the the time of both animal cruelty acts – the 2012 case with the dogs and the 2017 case with the cats.
Kaliyappan was labeled a “recalcitrant offender” by the AVA for his repeated acts of cruelty toward animals.
The AVA has been cracking down hard on cases of animal abuse, delivering swift justice to those who are cruel to animals. Just recently, a dog who had been boarded at the Platinum Dogs Club was found out to be dead and already cremated, even though the club claimed that he had gone missing. Read the article by The Independent here.
“We will take enforcement action against anyone who has committed an act of animal cruelty and will press for deterrent sentences if warranted,” vowed the AVA.
“Individuals who commit animal cruelty are liable to a maximum fine of $15,000 and/or 18 months jail term for first convictions.”