A 53-year-old married man was sentenced to four months of jail term as he was found guilty of sending sexual messages to a person believed to be a minor female. But the police could not identify the victim of this case, which went to the trial before the accused pleaded guilty.
Police arrested the man, Muhammad Syazili Muhammad Noor Aal Toha, after receiving a tip from an unidentified informant, who told the authority that in February 2017, the accused was having the sexual conversation on online chatting platforms like Tagged with the victim, who is believed to be a 15-year-old girl.
The informant also told them that both parties had exchanged several pictures of their genitalia during the period of their online chat. Those pictures and messages were sent to the police as evidence.
Later, police identified the male accused and arrested him and the further investigation has revealed that Syazili downloaded the app Tagged in last 2016 with an intention to chat with younger girls, like the victim.
During the hearing, Deputy Public Prosecutor Michael Quilindo told the court that in December 2016 the accused communicated with the victim, who looked very young in the profile picture. The chat history stated that the minor introduced herself as a 15-year-old girl, who was having her school holidays. The profile picture of the accused showed a sex toy and Syazili told the girl about the usage of it.
As per the court documents, the conversation started to take a turn towards the discussion about sexual acts. The convict asked the girl to call him "daddy" and said that daddy is "teaching sex education to baby." Syazili also instructed her to perform sexual acts on herself while imagining that he was doing them.
But the conversation was interrupted after the girl told Syazili that her older brother had seen her doing sexual acts and performed other sexual acts on her. The accused told the girl that her future husband will be angry with her as she has lost her virginity and she also would get pregnant, as her brother did not use any protection.
The man also told her not to get engaged with her brother in a sexual act as it's a serious offence and her brother can face jail sentence as well as canning and his face would be in the news. These comments showed that the convict knew about the punishments that one can receive for making a sexual connection with a minor.
Later, he tried to meet the girl in person and said that he would give her condoms as well as sex toys. When the minor told him that she will turn to 16 next week, Syazili showed how eager he was to perform sexual acts on her and teach her how to reciprocate. He also sent the girl the picture of his genitalia and in return, he asked the girl to do the same. After the minor agreed the conversation ended but both of them never came face to face.
As per the statement, provided to the police by Syazili, he admitted that he selects younger girls as they are easy to tackle during a sexual conversation and so that he can fantasized a sexual act with them.
Even though, police have not been able to identify and locate the victim, Syazili pleaded guilty to attempting to procure the commission of an indecent act by a young person and to forwarding an obscene image.
The prosecutor sought for at least five months of imprisonment, while stating that the accused was deliberately seeking out a minor for sexual gratification, but the defence lawyer Gino Hardial Singh urged for a fine, or not more than three weeks of jail term if the fine were not allowed.
Syazili's stated that since there had no physical contact between his client and the victim, who could not been identified or ascertained to have been a minor at the time of the offence. He also added that Syazili had expressed deep remorse.
This is the first case where the victim has not been identified and the case initially went to trial. However, District Judge Terence Tay sentenced the accused to four months of imprisonment and allowed him to defer the sentence for a month.
