KOTA KINABALU: A 21-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years’ jail and 10 strokes of the cane for raping a teenager.
Sessions Court judge Elsie Primus imposed the sentence on Marham Abdul Hamid after he pleaded guilty to the offence.
She also ordered the accused, who had no identification documents, to be referred to the Immigration Department for deportation after serving the sentence.
Marham raped the 15-year-old girl in an unnumbered house at a village in Kota Belud in the middle of July 2018.
The offence under Section 376 of the Penal Code carries a jail term of between 10 and 30 years and whipping, upon conviction.
Based on facts of the case, the accused and victim know each other through WhatsApp in June 2018 and became close.
In July 2018, they met for the first time and the accused had forced the victim to drink alcoholic drinks, which caused her to become unconscious.
The victim regained consciousness with only a shirt on her body, and later asked the accused to send her home.
In October 2018, the victim’s mother noticed a change in the victim’s body and brought her to a doctor for an examination.
The victim was then found to be four-month pregnant, prompting the mother to lodge a police report.
The accused was arrested on December 18, 2018 and a DNA test confirmed the baby is the biological child of the accused.
The accused, who was not represented, pleaded for leniency, but deputy public prosecutor Mas Izzaty Lokman urged the court to impose a deterrent sentence.
Mas Izzaty emphasized that the victim was only 15 years old and impregnated, and gave birth to a baby girl, who is also the biological child of the accused as shown in the report.