33-year-old Rizuwan Rohmat drove a van with his family inside without a valid driving license and hit a car, before fleeing when the driver asked for his license, resulting in a nearby police car giving chase to him. The police later found his van abandoned with his family still inside.
He had his initial fine changed to a jail term of 5 weeks on Friday, with the High Court setting a benchmark sentence of 4 weeks for archetypal cases of driving without a valid license, where drivers who have never held a valid driving license get caught because of police enforcement action.
What happened?
Rizuwan, who failed his Class 3 and 3A driving tests, possessed only a provisional driving license which is issued to learner drivers.
A week before his illegal traffic crime spree, all three delivery drivers that he hired for his company quit, but he continued to accept orders from his customers.
on 6 September 2020, he drove a van in the morning to deliver parcels before heading home in the afternoon to pick up his wife and kids for dinner.
He delivered a parcel before heading into Woodlands Close heading towards Woodlands Avenue 12, at the time the roads were set because it had been raining.
Reaching a red light, he hit a car that had stopped and caused minor damage but no injuries were reported.
The other driver then asked him for his driving license and Rizuwan then drove off, resulting in a police car nearby giving chase to him.
When officers eventually located his van, his family was still inside the vehicle while he had already run off.
He pleaded guilty on 2 August 2021 to a charge of driving without a class 3 license, a charge of careless driving and another charge of driving without insurance coverage.
He initially received a fine of $9,800 and a 2-year driving ban, but the prosecution then appealed to the High Court against the $8,000 fine for driving without a license and his punishment then got upgraded to a jail term of 5 weeks on 17 March last week.