Ramalingam Ravinthran v Public Prosecutor

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Chan Sek Keong CJ
• Judgment Date: 11 April 2011
• Neutral Citation: [2011] SGCA 14
• Court: Court of Appeal (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Criminal Appeal No 28 of 2009
• Published date: 14 July 2011
• Year: 2011
• Hearing Date: 07 September 2010
• Plaintiff Counsel: Suresh Damodara, Leonard Hazra (Damodara, Hazra, K Sureshan LLP) and Jeyapalan Ayaduray (Jeya & Associates)
• Defendant Counsel: Mark Tay, Prem Raj s/o Prabakaran and Kevin Yong (Attorney-General's Chambers)
• Subject Matter: Criminal Law
• Citation: [2011] SGCA 14

Chan Sek Keong CJ (delivering the grounds of decision of the court): Introduction

This was an appeal by Ramalingam Ravinthran (“the appellant”) against the decision of the trial judge (“the Judge”) in Criminal Case No 29 of 2007 (see Public Prosecutor v Ramalingam Ravinthran [2009] SGHC 265 (“the GD”)) convicting him of two charges of trafficking in a controlled drug (ie, respectively, 5,560.1g of cannabis and 2,078.3g of cannabis mixture), an offence under s 5(1)(a) read with s 33 of and the Second Schedule to the Misuse of Drugs Act (Cap 185, 2001 Rev Ed) (“the MDA”).

The two charges arose in the same transaction. A sports bag (“the sports bag”) containing eight blocks of vegetable matter, each wrapped in aluminium foil and transparent plastic cling wrap, was recovered from the rear left passenger seat of a motor car when the appellant was arrested after a car chase. The eight blocks of vegetable matter were put in three separate plastic bags inside the sports bag. At the time of his arrest, the appellant was alone in the car. The eight blocks of vegetable matter, upon analysis, were found to contain cannabis and cannabis mixture, both controlled substances under the MDA. This gave rise to two distinct charges, one for trafficking in cannabis and the other for trafficking in cannabis mixture, as cannabis and cannabis mixture are classified as different drugs for the purposes of the MDA.

At the conclusion of oral submissions before us, we dismissed the appeal. We now give our reasons.

Background

The undisputed facts set out in the statements given by the appellant to the Central Narcotics Bureau (“CNB”) were as follows. The appellant, a Singapore citizen, was in the business of supplying workers to the refinery, oil rig and marine industries, a business he set up in 1982. According to the appellant’s statements, he was introduced in 2001 to four labour supply contractors in Malaysia, two of whom were Anand and Kumar. The appellant would use their services when he had contracts in Malaysia.

Sometime in 2005 or 2006, the appellant met Anand and Kumar in a restaurant near a temple in Johor Bahru, Malaysia. With them were one Tamby, who was their foreman, and some other men. Tamby introduced one or more of them to the appellant, including one “Rajoo” (whose real name was Sundar Arujanan). Subsequently, Sundar Arujanan (“Sundar”) would telephone the appellant from time to time to ask if the appellant had work opportunities for him. They would also meet socially from time to time in Singapore, sometimes by chance and sometimes by arrangement over the telephone.

Sometime in April or May 2006, Anand and Kumar invited the appellant to a nightclub in Johor Bahru, where they had drinks and women for company. The appellant drank a glass of beer, which he later suspected to have been laced with drugs as he felt giddy after drinking it, even though, ordinarily, he could drink up to fifteen glasses of beer without difficulty. When he asked Kumar what was in the beer, Kumar replied, “party things” which were “good for the women”. After that, the appellant attended similar social events with Anand and Kumar weekly. On two or three such occasions, Anand gave the appellant cigarettes to smoke, which the appellant also suspected contained drugs.

On one of these social occasions, Kumar told the appellant that there were three or four incidents when people had “cheated him” in Singapore. He then told the appellant that he trusted him, and asked him to help him. When the appellant asked what kind of help Kumar meant, Kumar replied that it involved transportation of something, but had “nothing to do with drugs or explosives”. The appellant told Kumar that he would help him if he had the time.

Sometime in May or June 2006, the appellant received a telephone call from Kumar asking him to help transport a bag from the Sri Arasakesari Sivan Temple (“the SAS Temple”) at 25 Sungei Kadut Avenue, Singapore, to the “Sungei Kadut canteen” (properly known as the Hawkerway Food Court) at 16A Sungei Kadut Way. The appellant was told to go to the SAS Temple in his car, leave the car door unlocked and then go inside the temple to pray. Upon receiving the bag, the appellant was to bring it to the Hawkerway Food Court, although he was not told whom he should deliver it to. On a pre-arranged day in June 2006, the appellant drove to the SAS Temple, parked his car at the temple grounds and left the door unlocked as instructed. He then went inside the temple to pray. When he came out 20 minutes later, he saw that a bag had been placed on the back seat of his car. He drove to the Hawkerway Food Court with the bag, parked his car nearby and had a meal there. When he returned to his car 25 minutes later, the bag was no longer inside the car. The appellant entered his car and drove off. After about 10 minutes of driving, Kumar telephoned the appellant and informed him that the bag had been collected. Kumar told the appellant further that he thought the appellant would have looked into the bag, which contained safety boots. During a social outing with Kumar after this incident, the appellant asked Kumar why the bag had to be left in and taken from his car, and why he could not have received it and delivered it face-to-face. Kumar replied by telling the appellant not to worry about it.

On the morning of 13 July 2006, the appellant received a telephone call from Tamby (see [5] above), who told him that Kumar or Sundar would call him in the afternoon. That afternoon, Kumar telephoned the appellant at his office at around 2pm and told him to meet Sundar at the SAS Temple at 3.30pm. Sundar himself telephoned shortly after to confirm this. The appellant drove to the SAS Temple at around 3.30pm, but found the gates closed. He then telephoned Sundar, who said he would take some time to get there. The appellant replied that he had work to do and was not sure if he would wait; he then drove off.

While he was driving, the appellant received another telephone call from an unknown person telling him to go to “the canteen”, whereupon the appellant drove to the Hawkerway Food Court at Sungei Kadut Way. The appellant did not recognise the voice of the caller at the time, but, later, it occurred to him that the caller was a person called Abang who had been introduced to him at Kumar’s office in Malaysia sometime at the end of 2005.

The appellant arrived at the Hawkerway Food Court at around 3.45pm, parked his car nearby and went to the food court to use the restroom. When he was in the restroom, a person approached him. The appellant addressed him as “Abang”, but did not immediately recognise him. However, he later recalled that it was the same Abang whom he had met at Kumar’s office in late 2005. Abang then asked the appellant, “Hasn’t the book arrived?”, to which the appellant replied, “No.” Abang then gave the appellant a bundle of currency notes and told him to give the money to whoever brought the book, saying that it was “workman’s money”. After Abang left the restroom, the appellant entered a toilet cubicle to count the money, which amounted to $4,000. The appellant then left the restroom, had a meal at the food court and left the food court.

Between 4.15pm and 5.00pm on the same day, the appellant drove around the Sungei Kadut area on work-related errands and had coffee at a coffee shop. He then drove to the SAS Temple, arriving at around 5.15pm. As the gate was open, he parked in the compound and got out of the car. Sundar then approached the car, opened the door and placed the sports bag (ie, the sports bag defined at [2] above) on the back passenger seat. Both men then got into the car. The appellant gave the $4,000 which he had received from Abang to Sundar, saying that it was “workman’s money”. Both men then left the SAS Temple in the appellant’s car at about 5.20pm.

The Judge’s findings in relation to what happened at the SAS Temple are summarised at [3]–[5] of the GD as follows: 3 Officers of the Central Narcotics Bureau (“CNB”) had kept the [appellant] on surveillance on the date of his arrest on 13 July 2006. He was observed to have driven his car SBR 4484 (“the car”) into the compound of Sri Arasakesari Sivan Temple (“the temple”) along Sungei Kadut Avenue at about 5.15 pm. The [appellant] parked the car and went out of it. He then met up with another man, Sundar Arujunan (“Sundar”) in the compound. Sundar was carrying a red and blue bag (“the [sports] bag”). Sundar placed the [sports] bag into the back seat of the car. The [appellant] and Sundar then went into the car, with the [appellant] driving and Sundar in the front passenger’s seat. He drove the car out of the temple compound and proceeded to Woodlands Road where Sundar alighted, leaving the [sports] bag in the car. 4 The CNB officers continued to keep surveillance on the [appellant]’s car. They trailed the car as it made its way to Kranji Expressway, Sungei Tengah Road, Bricklands Road, KJE, Pioneer Road North, Jurong West Streets 91, 92 and 93, Upper Jurong Road, Pioneer Road North, Pioneer Circle and Pioneer Road where the journey ended with the arrest of the [appellant]. 5 The route taken by the [appellant] showed that he was driving around in no particular direction. The officers noted in their pocket books after the arrest that the [appellant] was driving at a high speed, that he drove through two red traffic lights and made two turns around Pioneer Circle.

The appellant made no mention of the car chase in his statements to the CNB. The arresting CNB officers gave a full account of it and of the manner in which the appellant was arrested. When asked about it in cross-examination, the appellant did not dispute the route taken or the manner of his arrest; however, he denied that he had driven at a high speed at the material time, had driven through two red traffic lights or had been trying to elude the cars following him to...