31-year-old Mustaqim Rosli, is being accused of suffocating a three-month-old baby to her death with a pillow, and charged with causing the death of a person below the age of 14.

The incident allegedly took place last year on 3 December 2022 at Block 447A Bukit Batok West Avenue 9, according to the charge sheets.

Rosli is being accused of placing a pillow on top of the face of Nur Misha Syaifa Binte Mustaqim (the baby) and smothering her to death by placing his hand on top of the pillow, resulting in the baby suffocating and dying.

Both Rosli and the baby were reportedly from the same household, and he was said to have had frequent contact with the deceased, although court documents didn’t mention how they were related.

Rosli is currently out on a bail of $15,000 and is scheduled to return to court on 1 June, where he faces a jail term of up to 20 years, a fine and caning if he is found guilty.

Other similar cases

Earlier this year, a 2-month-old baby died after being ill-treated and forcefully dropped by a couple at a Sembawang flat – the baby died with a fractured skull.

A 2-month-old baby, Zabelle Peh Yu Xuan, was forcefully dropped into a baby cot by 29-year-old Sim Liang Xiu on 8 January and died from a fractured skull.

Her husband, 31-year-old Peh Wei Jian had allegedly slapped the baby in a flat at Block 363 Sembawang Crescent on 5 January at about 1.30am.

The gag order preventing his identity from being revealed was lifted on Monday, and he is facing a new charge, although it was not disclosed in court; and he is intending to engage a lawyer.

Peh married Sim in 2018, and his wife is being accused of murdering the baby on 8 January.

29-year-old Sim Liang Xiu, was originally charged with causing grievous hurt to a baby by forcefully dropping the infant into a cot.

Sim’s charge has since been upgraded to murder and is now accused of causing the death of the baby, Zabelle Peh Yu Xuan.

A court order that forbids her identification was lifted, although the woman’s relation to the baby was not revealed in court documents.

She was originally charged with forcefully dropping the 2-month-old baby into a cot on 8 January knowing that her action would cause grievous hurt to the baby.

The baby suffered a fracture to her skull as a result of Sim’s alleged actions.

A 42-year-old Singaporean man who was reportedly the mastermind behind a “wife-sharing” rape case, pleaded guilty at the High Court on 4 May.

The man, identified in court documents as “J”, is a Singaporean father of four children, and he told the court that he wanted to accept his “due punishment”.

The parties involved in the case cannot be identified because of a court order, with the other accused being identified at K,L,M,N,O and P.

5 of the 7 accused have since been sentenced, with only J and another accused left.

J’s wife was raped by 5 men over 8 years after her husband drugged her on several occasions under the guise of giving her medicine to help with her menstrual pain, and he also raped her thrice from 2012 to 2013 – J also raped M’s ex-wife back in 2018.

Background

J met his now 41-year-old wife back in 2008, and he once asked her if she was keen in having a three-person intercourse to satisfy his fantasy but she refused.

He then conspired with other men with similar fantasies that he had met on the Sammyboy forum in 2010 and they then set their plans in motion.

The men had wives themselves, and they would drug the victims and invite other men into their homes to rape them while they were unconscious, filming the acts and livestreaming it to others in the group.

The truth saw the day of light when J’s wife came across video(s) of herself engaging in obscene acts while she was unconscious – J was watching the video on his phone and fell asleep without turning it off.

The victim then went through the group’s conversations and found out that the men had been raping their wives, and she then slapped her husband to wake him up and confronted him.

The men were subsequently arrested by the police.

A 34-year-old woman in Singapore, Durga Devi, was attacked by a wild boar earlier this week (1 May) at Bukit Panjang and had flesh from her leg and behind bitten off by the animal.

According to her sister Sri, Durga was on her way home from work at the time at about 11.50pm, alighting from the bus at Block 270 Bangkit Road when the wild boar charged at her.

Durga was alone at the bus stop at the time after the bus had driven off, and she was bitten on her lower right leg – the boar was an adult roughly the size of two dogs, and it bit on Durga’s lower right leg firmly.

She struggled to free herself from the huge boar and got thrown onto the road by the animal during the attack, and she then noticed an oncoming bus while she was lying on the road.

She then managed to get herself back on the pavement and away from the oncoming traffic before the traffic lights turned green, as the wild boar remained nearby.

The wild boar then attacked her once again, and she noticed that the wild boar was limping as it hustled towards her, this time biting her right thumb and right back side before throwing her onto the road again.

Durga suffered injuries all over the right side of her body as she was attacked a total of four times by the wild boar.

She screamed for help after seeing a male jogger passing by, and the jogger then chased the boar away and helped Durga off the road, before calling the ambulance.

Her sister arrived at the scene and followed Durga in the ambulance as their mother alerted the authorities to what happened.

Durga was then sent to Tan Tock Seng Hospital and has remained warded ever since, undergoing emergency surgery to reattach the ruptured veins on her hand, as well as operating on the rest of her open wounds.

She went through a total of 4 surgery so far.

Wild boar caught and killed

The group director of wildlife management at NParks, Dr Adrian Loo, said that they were alerted to the incident on 2 May and found the wild boar lying by the side of the road.

The animal was assessed and found with two broken back legs and has since been euthanised humanely.

Dr Look also urged the public to stay calm should they encounter a wild boar and slowly distance themselves from the animal, as well as refrain from provoking, feeding or approaching the animal.

Images source: Sri Devi

A 27-year-old Malaysian man had lied about his history of intercourse partners when donating blood in Singapore, and his blood was later found to be HIV positive.

The man, who cannot be named due to a court order, pleaded guilty in court yesterday (3 May) to an offence under the Infectious Diseases Act and was sentenced to 3 months and 2 weeks imprisonment.

The prosecutor for the Singapore Ministry of Health (MOH), said that the man had intercourse with an ex-girlfriend in February 2020, before having intercourse with another man in August that year.

But it was not ascertained how he got infected with HIV, for which there is no cure but can be controlled with medication.

In October 2020, the man decided to donate blood, and he was asked in a donor health assessment questionnaire if he had slept with more than 1 partner in the previous 12 months, as well as asking if he had intercourse with another man.

The man’s answer to both questions was “no”.

A medical screener later interviewed him after the questionnaire and informed him that if his answers were false or misleading, he faces prosecution – She also told him that if he felt his blood shouldn’t be transfused to another person, he could call a 24-hour hotline.

But the man didn’t call the hotline or change his answers, and his blood was later found to be HIV positive after being tested.

It is also unknown if the man was aware that he was HIV positive before donating blood.

A doctor from HSA’s blood services group then interviewed the man on 2 November and he confessed to having had intercourse with another man.

An MOH officer also interviewed him on 5 November and he also admitted to her, and MOH’s enforcement branch was then alerted and he was charged in court in 2021.

The Coroner’s Inquiry into the death of 58-year-old Singaporean man Abd Karim Ali was opened yesterday (3 May), and investigators from the Police Coast Guard (PCG), the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and Ministry of Manpower (MOM) testified during the hearing.

Karim, who worked as a service technician on board a ship, had gone missing after falling into the sea before his body was found on the shores of Batam, Indonesia.

His brother then read an article about an unidentified dead body that was found by the authorities and later went to a hospital in Batam to identify the body, which belonged to his brother, by his clothes.

Background

On 17 May 2022, Karim was part of a three-man crew performing maintenance work on a ship off a sector of the Singapore Port, at the Eastern Petroleum A Anchorage, and after finishing their work, were disembarking from the ship to a company boat to bring them back to Marina South Pier.

He was doing down the gangway beside the ship and trying to cross over into the company boat when he suddenly lost his balance and fell backwards into the seawater.

His crew members saw him fall into the water and shouted for help, with one of them then throwing a lifebuoy into the water which Karim then grabbed, but he then lost his grip on it as his crew members were trying to pull him back and ended up being swept away by the sea current.

The crew then tried steering the boat towards Karim to rescue him but couldn’t find him after he went under the water – he was wearing a life jacket at the time while his crew members weren’t.

Search and rescue operations were then conducted by the MPA and PCG but they still couldn’t find Kariom.

About 5 days later, Karim’s younger brother read an Indonesian news article about an unidentified decomposed body found along the Batam shoreline by the Indonesian authorities, with a request for information being put out to help identify the body.

Karim’s brother believed that the body was Karim and went to the Batam hospital where he recognised his brother’s clothes on the body.

The body was later confirmed to be Karim through fingerprint analysis in Singapore, and his cause of death remained unconfirmed.

Life jacket was not activated

Although Karim was wearing a life jacket at the time, it didn’t inflate. The life jacket that Karim wore was taken for testing and found to be functional.

It was not an automatically inflating life jacket and a manual lever had to be activated to inflate the vest, which would retain air inside for 24 hours.

Investigators revealed that the device to activate the life jacket was not activated and that Karim had likely failed to locate it or activate it.

An investigating officer from MOM testified that there were also no records showing that Karim was briefed on how to use the life jacket as well.

The MOM officer also highlighted how Karim’s two colleagues were not wearing life jackets at the time, which they were supposed to, and MOM was considering taking action against those involved.

Karim was also revealed to have been carrying a backpack of equipment that weighed about 10kg at the time, which had likely contributed to him falling into the water, as well as not maintaining a “three-point contact” which is having three out of his 4 limbs in contact with whatever vessel or ladder that he was climbing on.

Facebook user Michael Ng shared how he counted and deposited $150 worth of coins into a DBS coin deposit machine.

However, he said that the machine only counted about $119.70 in the final amount from the coins that he deposited, with about $30.30 missing from the final count.

Ng added that he then tried reaching out to DBS for help and they allegedly told him that their machine was fine and that there was no fault with it and refused to give him a refund for th missing amount.

He lamented how the machine is not as accurate as claimed and said that although the receipt stated that he only deposited one piece of a 10-cent coin, he had actually put in many more in the machine.

He then added that he will be avoiding the DBS coin deposit machines “like the plague” and only exchange coins with hawkers from now on.

Here is what he said

Does anyone have any issues with DBS coin deposit machine of not having the correct final amount deposited?

I have counted and deposited $150 worth of various coin denominations into the machine but the final amount calculated was only $119.70. A difference of $30.30 was missing from the final amount.

Long story short, after 2 weeks of calling and chasing DBS, they have concluded that there was no fault with the machine and thus, no refund for the discrepant amount.

As seen from the receipt, it shows only a single 10 cent coin deposited when in fact, there should be many more. This alone shows that the machine is not as accurate as they claim. From now on, I will avoid these DBS coin deposit machines like the plague and only exchange coins with those hawker stalls.

Netizens’ comments

1. I always go to hawker stall because they need coins daily and get charged by banks to change dollars to coins
2. In the first place, when the amount collected shown on the screen, did you check?
   if you feel the counting is wrong, you could reject, and the whole amount should vomit back wrong?
3. DBS bank no more coins deposit fees. Next time take video before you throw the coins in.
4. Next time bring to NTUC pay cash using coins

The Police are investigating 135 persons, aged between 17 and 69, for their suspected involvement in unlicensed moneylending activities.

During a one-week anti-unlicensed moneylending operation conducted between 24 and 28 April 2023, officers from the Criminal Investigation Department and the seven Police land divisions conducted simultaneous raids island-wide.

Preliminary investigations revealed that 13 persons had allegedly conducted harassment at debtors’ residences, and 42 persons are believed to be runners who had assisted in unlicensed moneylending businesses by carrying out Automated Teller Machine (ATM) transfers.

The remaining 80 persons are believed to have opened bank accounts and provided their ATM cards, Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) and/or Internet Banking tokens to unlicensed moneylenders to facilitate their unlicensed moneylending businesses.

Investigations against all the persons are ongoing.

Under the Moneylenders Act 2008:

• The offence of carrying on or assisting in a business of unlicensed moneylending carries an imprisonment term of up to four years, a fine between $30,000 and $300,000, and caning of up to six strokes.
  
• The offence of acting on behalf of an unlicensed moneylender, committing or attempting to commit any acts of harassment carries an imprisonment term of up to five years, a fine between $5,000 and $50,000, and caning between three and six strokes.

The Police will continue to take tough enforcement action against those involved in the unlicensed moneylending business, regardless of their roles, and ensure that they face the full brunt of the law. This includes taking action against those who open or give away their bank accounts to aid unlicensed moneylenders.

Unlicensed moneylenders are increasingly using text messaging or online platforms to send unsolicited loan advertisements. Members of the public are reminded not to reply or respond to such advertisements and to report these messages as spam. Members of the public are also advised to stay away from unlicensed moneylenders and not to work with or assist them in any way. The public can call the Police at ‘999’ or the X-Ah Long hotline at 1800-924-5664 if they suspect or know of anyone who could be involved in unlicensed moneylending activities.

The Police have arrested a 23-year-old man for his suspected involvement in a case of loanshark harassment.

On 30 April 2023, the Police received a report of loanshark harassment along Woodlands Avenue 5, where a residential unit was reported to have been splashed with red paint.

Through ground enquiries and with the aid of images from Police cameras, officers from Woodlands Police Division established the identity of the man and arrested him on 2 May 2023.

Preliminary investigations revealed that the man is believed be involved in another three similar cases along York Hill, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 4 and Pasir Ris Street 51.

The man will be charged in court on 3 May 2023 under the Moneylenders Act 2008. First time offenders found guilty of loanshark harassment shall be fined not less than $5,000 and not more than $50,000, with mandatory imprisonment of up to five years and caning of up to six strokes.

The Police have zero tolerance for loanshark harassment activities. Those who deliberately vandalise properties, cause annoyance and disruption to public safety and security, will be dealt with severely in accordance with the law.

Members of the public are advised to stay away from loansharks and not to work with or assist the loansharks in any way. The public can call the Police at ‘999’ or the X-Ah Long hotline at 1800-924-5664 if they suspect or know of anyone who could be involved in loansharking activities.