A security guard has been sentenced to two months in prison for blackmailing a teenage couple, after catching them having sex on the staircase landing of a condominium.
Nagindran Dharmiah, 32, a Singapore permanent resident, worked as a security guard at a condominium on Simei Street. While making his rounds on the night of Mar 31, 2014, he stumbled upon the couple – a girl and her boyfriend, both 19 and whose names have been withheld to protect their identities – having sex and in various states of undress on the 11th floor staircase landing in the 27th block of the condominium, where the girl was a resident.
He accused the boyfriend of trespassing and told the couple that their act had been caught on CCTV camera, and that he would be able to playback the recording by connecting his clocking device which resembled a black torchlight, to the camera. He also took a photo of the couple using his mobile phone. Investigations later revealed that Nagindran had been bluffing and that there was no CCTV camera on the 11th floor.
Nagindran also made threats to call the police and the couple’s parents — to which the pair responded by pleading with him not to do so. He then agreed to break the clocking device if the couple paid him S$1,000 in cash as an initial sum to replace the device.
Afraid that they would get into trouble since Nagindran knew her home address, the girl withdrew the amount and gave it to Nagindran, after which he deleted the photo from his mobile phone and took down her contact number.
The next day, Nagindran sent the girl a text message demanding an additional S$850, claiming that it was the remaining sum to replace the clocking device he had promised to break. He asked her to meet him at Tai Seng MRT station to handover the money. The girl then made a police report. Later that evening, the girl met Nagindran at the MRT station and handed him an envelope containing S$50. He was then arrested by police officers who were at the station.
Nagindran was charged with three counts of aggravated cheating, which each carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment, or fine, or both.
However, in delivering the sentence at the State Courts today, District Judge Lim Tze Haw took into consideration that the amount of money involved was small and that this was Nagindran’s first offence.
The judge chastised Nagindran for neglecting his duty as a security guard and for “committing the very crime (he) was supposed to prevent”. He imposed a two-month jail sentence for each charge, to run concurrently starting on Monday (Jan 5), and also ordered for the money to be returned.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
