KOTA KINABALU: The Sessions Court here yesterday sentenced a jobless local man to three years’ imprisonment for six charges of trafficking six Indonesian women for sex exploitation.
HUMAN TRAFFICKING TRIAL: Kamsan (front) and Mohd Rashid being escorted out of the courtroom.
Judge Ismail Brahim meted out the jail term on Mohd Rashid Muda, 45, after the latter maintained his plea of guilty to the charges and having admitted to the facts of the case.
However, Ismail fixed March 23 to 24 this year for the trial of Kamsan Kaco, 34, after he had denied the facts of the case which was tendered by the prosecution yesterday.
The duo had initially pleaded guilty to the joint charges on Jan 26 this year but the court deferred the sentencing to yesterday pending the facts of the case.
Ismail sentenced Mohd Rashid from Kampung Likas to three years’ jail for each of the six charges but the latter would only serve three years in prison after the court ordered the jail terms to run concurrently.
Mohd Rashid admitted to trafficking the six Indonesian women aged between 16 and 27 for the purpose of sex exploitation at an apartment in Inanam at about 4.40pm on Sept 7, last year.
The charges which were framed under Section 12 of the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act 2007 provides for a jail term of up to 15 years and a fine on conviction.
According to the facts of the case, a police team raided a house following a tip-off given by two of the six women, who had escaped from the house, about trafficking activities being carried out in the house.
Upon reaching the premises, the police saw Mohd Rashid (the second accused) at a car park and in the act of catching a key which had been thrown out from a window of the house.
Police then arrested Mohd Rashid and seized the key from him before going up the stairs of the house.
Kamsan was arrested while he was on the stairs of the house.
The police entered the house using the said key and found four women inside a room, believed to have been prostituted by the two accused and seized several items from the house including a MyKad, four air tickets, a sling bag, seven units of handphones, an excercise book which recorded the number of customers and the income derived and a bunch of keys to a Proton Wira car.
The two accused and the four Indonesian women and the items seized from the house were brought to the police station for further action.
Further investigations had revealed that the six Indonesian women were brought in from Indonesia by a man and had been forced into prostitution at a hotel in Kampung Air here.
When the man returned to Indonesia, the two accused took over the illegal activity.
The first accused was to observe the movements of all the women and collect the money being the daily income from the vice activities and was also responsible to bring the women to their work place and to fetch them home.
The second accused also monitored the movements of all the women and was also responsible to bring them to their work place and fetch them home.
When the facts were read by the court interpreter to the duo, Kamsan told the court that he did not collect the money and claimed that the MyKad was already in the house when they entered prompting the court to reject his plea of guilty and fixed the trial date for him.
Deputy public prosecutor Nartiah F.Mirchelle Sambatan would be calling 10 witnesses for the trial.
Earlier counsel Hairul V.Othman, who acted for Mohd Rashid, applied for a lenient sentence to be imposed on his client stating that he (Mohd Rashid) has a wife and four children to look after.
He said that Mohd Rashid had been suffering chronic coughs since 2006 and needed medical attention from time to time.
The counsel also applied for the jail terms to the six charges to run concurrently.