A 32-year old electrician from India, Seetharaman Ramesh, was sentenced to three weeks’ imprisonment after pleading guilty to a charge for an offence of outraging the modesty of a 39-year old woman around her left underarm area onboard a public bus travelling along Geylang Road.
An additional two charges for similar offences were taken into consideration for the purpose of sentencing.
On 25 July 2015, the victim had boarded the bus followed by Seetharaman 20 minutes later.
While she was seated at the second last row, Seetharaman progressively moved towards the back of the bus to be closer to her until he sat down on the last row and directly behind the victim.
As the bus was moving, Seetharaman put his fingers through a gap between the seats and touched the victim’s left underarm area.
The Prosecution argued for a deterrent sentence to be imposed in order to discourage others from potentially taking advantage of female victims and by carrying similar offences in such an opportunistic manner.
In imposing sentence, the Court found that the imprisonment term was warranted because the offence took place on public transport and it did not involve an isolated act.
More information on the case may be found here.