Man gets five-year jail for rioting outside gurdwara in Singapore

YADWINDER PLEADED GUILTY AFTER A FIVE-DAY TRIAL TO RIOTING WITH A DEADLY WEAPON, FAILING TO PRESENT TRAVEL DOCUMENTS AND EXTORTION

PUNISHMENT was also on bail for another extortion offence.

Two weeks before his trial for rioting began, Yadwinder made plans to leave the country illegally, paying a man SGD 4,000 to flee Singapore in the cargo hold of a bus.

He carried out his plan in October 2018 after the first tranche of the trial, but was discovered by Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officers at Tuas Checkpoint linking to southern Peninsular Malaysia.

He was arrested along with the bus driver on being found hiding in the cargo hold of the vehicle.

After seeing how Yadwinder had been nabbed for trying to leave Singapore, three men accused of being involved in the riot stopped turning up for the trial, the court heard. Arrest warrants were put out for them and they have been at large since.

Yadwinder pleaded guilty after a five-day trial to rioting with a deadly weapon, failing to present travel documents upon departure and extortion with common intention.

Two months before the riot, he and four others extorted SGD 200 from a 21-year-old Indian national, according to the Channel News Asia report. They threatened to report her to the public housing authority, Housing and Development Boar, for supposedly having more than the legal number of tenants in her flat.

Yadwinder, who was unrepresented, was sentenced to jail for five years and five months, along with 12 strokes of the cane.

ADDITIONAL JAIL TERM OF 129 DAYS

District judge Marvin Bay gave him an additional jail term of 129 days for committing a crime while on remission for earlier offences, the maximum possible for this case.

According to a list prepared by deputy public prosecutor Jason Chua, Yadwinder had been committing crimes repeatedly since 2015, three years after arriving in Singapore to work in construction.

The judge granted Yadwinder 10 minutes to speak to his fiancée and friends who attended the hearing, as long as they “maintained a certain civility”.

CO-ACCUSED HEARD IN COURT

All of Yadwinder’s co-accused have been dealt with in court. One of his opponents, Nirmal Singh, who had swung his belt during the riot, had his appeal against his 31-month jail sentence and caning dismissed by the high court.