March 23,2019:

An Indian national has been sentenced to 5 years of jail term and 12 strokes of cane for swinging a plank during a riot involving about 60 people outside a Gurudwara in Singapore.

Yadwinder Singh, 26, was leader of one of two groups of people who started fighting outside Silat Road Sikh Temple in Bukit Merah area in April, 2017.

Two groups of men wielded wooden poles, planks and belts, spilling onto road and disrupting traffic, Court was informed.

Court did not specify the reasons behind the fight.

Footage from a public bus, played in court on Friday, showed that Yadwinder brandishing a long wooden plank at the members of opposing group.

Court heard that Yadwinder and his group gathered at bus stop outside Gurudwara after prayers that morning.

Some of them had armed themselves with wooden planks. They chased after the men from the opposing group, who were walking along Kampong Bahru Road after leaving the Gurudwara, shouting vulgarities at them before attacking them.

Men from both sides attacked each other with poles, planks and belts in the melee.

Yadwinder was seen hitting two men with his wooden plank, injuring one man’ scalp and face.

After his arrest, Yadwinder plotted to leave Singapore illegally. He had already been jailed previously for rioting and unlawful assembly in 2016 and had committed this fresh offence while on remission.

He 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 cargo hold of a bus.

He carried out his plan in October 2018, after 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.

Source HT

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