Jail term for worker in Singapore riot
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A construction worker who refused to leave the scene of last December's Little India riot in Singapore was jailed for 15 weeks.
Indian national Chinnappa Vijayaragunatha Poopathi, 32, was the first of 25 accused to be sentenced. He was originally charged with rioting but pleaded guilty last Friday to an amended charge of continuing to be in an assembly after it had been ordered to disperse under Section 151 of the Penal Code.
The amended charge came after the Attorney-General’s Chambers considered the extent of Chinnappa's involvement, his guilty plea and representations made by the defence.
Deputy Chief District Judge S Jennifer Marie, who called Chinnappa’s conduct “defiant and brazen”, ordered the man’s imprisonment to take effect from his arrest on December 8.
Chinnappa, who arrived in Singapore in October last year and earned S$22 (Bt565) a day, had ignored calls for people to disperse. He continued to walk to the Kodai Canteen eatery near the junction of Kerbau and Chander roads, where groups of rioters had been hurling projectiles at Home Team personnel on the night of December 8.
Chinnappa joined an assembly of about 10 others gathered outside the canteen.
Court documents said he “shouted at the canteen employees, demanding that they reopen the shops and sell alcohol to them, further heightening tensions”. He refused to leave until more police arrived, and was later arrested on Kerbau Road.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Sellaku-maran Sellamuthoo urged the court to jail Chinnappa for at least four to six months, arguing the sentence had to reflect the magnitude of the night’s disorder and serve as a deterrent.
The riot – the worst violence in Singapore in more than four decades – left 49 Home Team officers injured and 23 emergency vehicles damaged.
Judge Marie imposed a 15-week sentence, which was close to the three months proposed by the defence, because she was “mindful that consideration of general deterrence be tempered by proportionality in relation to the severity of the offence committed as well as by the ... culpability of the offender”.
She added that Chinnappa had not been in the immediate vicinity of the riot’s eruption on Race Course Road, nor had he been violent. He had also not caused any damage or impeded rescue work.
Defence counsel Sunil Sudheesan, who said the sentence was “quite fair”, noted that his client had already spent about eight weeks in remand and could be released within a week on the basis of good behaviour.
