Public Prosecutor v Muhammad Fadly Bin Abdull Wahab

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Choo Han Teck J
• Judgment Date: 22 August 2016
• Neutral Citation: [2016] SGHC 160
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Criminal Case No 38 of 2016
• Published date: 25 August 2016
• Year: 2016
• Hearing Date: 29 July 2016
• Plaintiff Counsel: Charlene Tay Chia, Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz and Tan Soo Tet (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Defendant Counsel: Ismail Hamid (Ismail Hamid & Co)
• Subject Matter: Criminal Law,Offences,Rape
• Citation: [2016] SGHC 160

Choo Han Teck J:

The accused Muhammad Fadly Bin Abdull Wahab (“Fadly”) was one of five youths aged between 20 (as Fadly is now) and 22 who were charged with the rape of a 21 year old female (“the victim”) who was, at the time of the offence, 18 years old, as was Fadly.

One of the other co-accused, Muhammad Hazly Bin Mohamad Halimi (“Hazly”) together with Fadly, pleaded guilty to the charge. The other three co-accused claimed trial and were not before me. Hazly and Fadly’s cases were heard on the same day. I sentenced Hazly to 11 years of imprisonment with six strokes of the cane, and I sentenced Fadly to 13 years of imprisonment with eight strokes of the cane. Fadly has filed an appeal against my decision.

The statement of facts was admitted by Fadly without qualification. The essential facts were that Fadly first met the victim at “Zouk” in October 2013 through a mutual friend. They continued to meet one another at “Zouk” on several occasions and eventually exchanged mobile phone numbers. Fadly invited the victim to a friend’s birthday party on 25 January 2014 at the Duxton Hotel. From the text messages exchanged between Fadly and Hazly that day, it was established that Fadly planned to get the victim drunk that night. The party of his friends met at Room 310 of the Duxton Hotel. There, Fadly introduced the victim to the others, and then gave her alcoholic drinks. The victim became very drunk and began vomiting after drinking her fourth cup of vodka. At 1.15am the party moved to Zouk, leaving Fadly and Hazly behind to look after the victim who had passed out by then.

Fadly then helped the victim to clean up. He took a photograph of the victim’s exposed breasts and sent it to one of his friends, Danial. Sometime in the early hours, between 1.15am and 3.44am, Fadly and Hazly raped the victim. The victim was in an extremely intoxicated state at the time. Later in the night, Fadly deleted his name and contact details from the contact list of the victim’s mobile phone. He also deleted text messages between them. On the same day, Fadly blocked the victim on his social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram.

The only mitigating factors in his favour were his age – he was 18 at the time of the offences, that he had pleaded guilty and that this was his first offence. He had no previous convictions. The prosecution submitted that the appropriate sentence should be 14 years imprisonment with nine strokes of the cane. The learned DPP...