57-year-old part-time cleaner Ravichandran Subramaniam, pleaded guilty to one count of using criminal force to outrage the modesty of a 7-year-old girl with wrongful restraint.
He was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment and another 3 months of jail time in lieu of caning, with a second charge being taken into consideration during his sentencing.
He had followed a 7-year-old girl into a lift, picked her up inside and molested her.
What happened?
The incident happened on 2 August earlier this year, when the victim left her home and went to a provision shop nearby to buy a snack.
Ravichandran saw the little girl walking through the void deck and asked her where she was going, and told her to meet him there after she was done buying her snack.
The girl had no intention of meeting the man, but they then bumped into each other again as she was heading home.
Ravichandran then told the girl to follow him as he walked towards a multi-storey carpark’s lift landing, but the girl refused to follow him and continued on her way home.
The man then followed behind the girl, who then started running away from him after realising he was trailing her; the girl even hid behind a pillar as Ravichandran continued to follow her.
The girl then went to the lift landing of her block, but Ravichandran then caught up with her and held her hand, before entering the lift with her.
He then wrapped one of his arms around her abdomen and the other arm around her legs when the lift door closed.
The girl tried to struggle but couldn’t break free from Ravichandran’s grasp and stop the man from molesting her.
The lift door then opened after arriving at the girl’s floor, and she then broke free and escaped from Ravichandran, who then followed behind her as she cried and shouted for her mother.
The victim’s mother then opened the door and saw Ravichandran following her daughter, and the man then said that he was accompanying the girl home and that he had done nothing to her.
The girl’s mother then lodged a police report after she found out what happened, and Ravichandran was then arrested later that day.
The man was intoxicated and had no memory of what he had done, and he was subsequently remanded at IMH for psychiatric evaluation, where he was found with an alcohol use disorder and was alcohol intoxicated.
But his condition was deemed to be not linked to his offences.
Drank alcohol daily
Ravichandran was a part time cleaner who drank alcohol daily, and on the day of the offence, he had drank 5 cans of beer – 3 before lunch and 2 after.