Re Salwant Singh s/o Amer Singh

• Jurisdiction: Singapore
• Judge: Sundaresh Menon CJ
• Judgment Date: 23 September 2019
• Neutral Citation: [2019] SGHC 225
• Hearing Date: 16 July 2019
• Citation: [2019] SGHC 225
• Published date: 26 September 2019
• Court: High Court (Singapore)
• Docket Number: Originating Summons No 171 of 2019
• Plaintiff Counsel: The applicant in person.
• Subject Matter: Legal Profession,Disciplinary proceedings
• Year: 2019

Sundaresh Menon CJ: Introduction

In 2003, the applicant pleaded guilty to and was convicted of five charges of cheating under s 420 of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 1985 Rev Ed) (“the five charges”). An additional 760 charges of cheating were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing. The District Judge sentenced the applicant to 12 years’ preventive detention (see Public Prosecutor v Salwant Singh s/o Amer Singh and another case [2003] SGDC 146 (“Salwant Singh (District Court)”). Both the Prosecution and the applicant appealed against the sentence imposed by the District Judge. On appeal, the applicant’s sentence was enhanced to a term of 20 years’ preventive detention (see Public Prosecutor v Salwant Singh s/o Amer Singh [2003] 4 SLR(R) 305 (“Salwant Singh (MA)”).

After the appeal was concluded, the applicant filed a number of criminal applications in an attempt to reopen his conviction and sentence. All of these applications have been dismissed by the courts. The applicant is currently serving his sentence.

In the present ex parte application, Originating Summons No 171 of 2019 (“OS 171”), the applicant sought leave for an investigation to be commenced into his complaint of misconduct against three Legal Service Officers, pursuant to s 82A(5) of the Legal Profession Act (Cap 161, 2009 Rev Ed) (“LPA”). The Legal Service Officers were, at the relevant time, Deputy Public Prosecutors (“DPPs”) involved in prosecuting the applicant. The applicant claimed that the DPPs fabricated certain charges against him which had been taken into consideration by the court for the purposes of sentencing.

Having considered the submissions of the applicant and the material before me, I dismissed OS 171 for reasons which I will explain in these grounds.

Facts Facts relevant to the charges against the applicant

The applicant’s allegations of misconduct against the three DPPs arose from events that transpired more than 15 years ago. The relevant events pertain to charges of cheating that were brought against the applicant by the Prosecution in 2003. Those charges arose from transactions carried out by the applicant in 1999, while he was a director of a company known as Infoseek Communications (S) Pte Ltd (“Infoseek”). The key facts contained in the Statement of Facts dated 20 May 2003 (“SOF”) may be summarised as follows: The applicant was a director of Infoseek, a company which offered international long distance telephone call services (“IDD call services”).¹ Customers could pay for Infoseek’s IDD call services by any of three modes of payment, one of which was post-paid credit card billing. Under this mode of payment, Infoseek would charge the amounts due for services used to the customer’s credit card. The applicant would key in the credit card number of the customer into an Electronic Draft Capture (“EDC”) terminal provided by the United Overseas Bank (“UOB”) Card Centre and the bank would credit the amount into Infoseek’s UOB bank account on the next working day.² Between June and July 1999, the applicant generated fictitious credit card transactions using the EDC terminal located at Infoseek’s premises. He would either duplicate calls of customers to inflate their total usage, or charge customers twice for the same incurred usage. During this period, the applicant had processed a total of 765 fictitious credit card transactions generating charges in excess of $500,000 using the EDC terminal.³

It was stated in the SOF that on 6 July 1999, the applicant left Singapore for India. This was a point emphasised by the applicant in the present application as some of the charges which had been taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing were in respect of transactions which were reflected in the charge and Schedule of Offences as being dated after 6 July 1999.

Extradition proceedings were eventually initiated against the applicant, who was ordered by the Indian courts to be extradited to Singapore to face the charges against him. The applicant returned to Singapore on 24 December 2002.⁴

The applicant’s antecedents

The applicant had committed several other offences prior to the 1999 cheating offences.⁵ His antecedents are summarised in the following table:

S/n	Date of conviction	Charge(s)	Sentence
1	7 November 1983	Convicted of one charge of mischief	Fine of $300
2	29 September 1986	Convicted of two charges: one charge of attempted rape and one charge of kidnapping or abducting with intent secretly and wrongfully to confine a person	Imprisonment term of three years and four strokes of the cane
3	21 April 1987	Convicted of nine charges: Two counts of robbery with hurt, two counts of theft, one count of cheating, inconsiderate driving, failure to attend to a traffic police notice, failure to render assistance in road accident and failure to report an accident; 64 other charges were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing	Imprisonment term of five years and six months, 12 strokes of the cane, and fine of $1,100
4	25 June 1987	Convicted of one charge of using vehicle with forged plates/ marks or documents under the Road Traffic Act	Fine of $500
5	16 March 1989	Convicted of four charges under the Road Traffic Act, Motor Vehicles (Driving Licence) Rules and the Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation) Act	Fine of $1,250 and driving disqualification
6	2 August 1989	Convicted of four charges: one charge of rash riding, two charges under the Road Traffic Act and one charge under the Motor Vehicles (Third-Party Risks and Compensation) Act	Fine of $3,000 and driving disqualification
7	6 September 1990	Convicted of three charges: cheating, theft of motor vehicles or component parts, and unlawful possession of offensive weapons; Four other charges were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing	Five years’ corrective training, six strokes of the cane, and driving disqualification

The District Court proceedings

The applicant was represented by counsel in the proceedings in the District Court. On 20 May 2003, in the presence of his counsel, the applicant elected to plead guilty to the five charges and consented to have the remaining 760 charges taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing. He admitted to the SOF without qualification. Sentencing was then adjourned to 22 May 2003 to allow the applicant’s counsel to prepare a mitigation plea on his behalf.⁶

On 22 May 2003, following the DPP’s submission that a sentence of preventive detention was called for, the District Judge adjourned sentencing for a further three weeks to enable a preventive detention suitability report to be prepared and submitted.⁷

On 5 June 2003, one week before the scheduled sentencing hearing, the applicant applied to retract his plea. His principal contention then was that the sentencing position which the Prosecution had advanced before the District Judge was contrary to what it had represented to him before he pleaded guilty. He claimed that the Prosecution had agreed not to seek a deterrent or enhanced sentence and had stated during a pre-trial conference that it would leave sentencing to the court.⁸ He also alleged that the Investigating Officer (“IO”) had pressured him to plead guilty, by amongst others, threatening his wife.⁹ On 11 June 2003, the day of the sentencing hearing, the applicant filed a second application to retract his plea, alleging that the prospect of preventive detention was contrary to the terms on which his extradition had been ordered.¹⁰

The District Judge refused the applicant’s applications to retract his plea which he found were unmeritorious and premised on baseless allegations. The District Judge found that the applicant had not offered any valid or sufficient grounds to justify the retraction of his plea, which had been voluntarily and unequivocally entered (see Salwant Singh (District Court) at [10]).

The District Judge sentenced the applicant to 12 years’ preventive detention having taken into account, mainly, the applicant’s antecedents, the offences with which he had been charged, as well as his lack of remorse (Salwant Singh (District Court) at [19]–[29]).

The Magistrate’s Appeal

Dissatisfied with the sentence imposed by the District Judge, the Prosecution filed Magistrate’s Appeal No 115 of 2003 (“MA 115”) on the basis that the sentence was manifestly inadequate. The applicant cross-appealed, claiming that the sentence was excessive. The applicant was unrepresented in MA 115.

In his petition of appeal and written submissions for MA 115, the applicant advanced three main submissions, which were similar to those raised before the District Judge, in his continuing effort to retract his plea: that the Prosecution had reneged on its promise not to seek a deterrent or enhanced sentence should the applicant plead guilty;¹¹ that the IO had pressured the applicant to plead guilty by, amongst other things, threatening his wife;¹² and that seeking preventive detention constituted a breach of the undertakings provided by the Singapore Government to the Government of India in its extradition request.¹³

MA 115 was heard by Yong Pung How CJ on 14 August 2003. At the hearing, the applicant also claimed for the first time that he had an alibi for all 765 charges and sought an order setting aside his conviction and setting the matter down for trial. Yong CJ rejected the applicant’s prayers on the basis that (a) the appeal was not the proper forum for such a request, the correct procedure being an application for revision rather than an appeal against sentence; and (b) a review of the evidence did not reveal any error so fundamental that it justified the exercise of the court’s revisionary powers on its own motion under ss 266 and 268 of the Criminal...