The man is escorted by police personnel at the Kuching Court Complex today.
KUCHING (Nov 1): The Sessions Court here today sentenced an unemployed man to a total of 24 years in jail and 14 strokes of the rotan after he pleaded guilty to incest and sexual assault on his 13-year-old sister-in-law.
Judge Afidah Abdul Rahman sentenced the 31-year-old man to 18 years in jail and 10 strokes of the rotan for incest framed under Section 376B(1) of the Penal Code.
He was also sentenced to six years in jail and four strokes of the rotan for sexual assault framed under Section 14(a) of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017, punishable under Section 14 of the same Act, and to be read together with Section 16 of the same Act for sexual assault, which carries a jail term of up to 20 years and caning.
Afidah also ordered the sentences to run consecutively from the date of his arrest on Oct 24, this year and for him to undergo three years of police supervision after serving his prison sentence.
According to the facts of the case, the man committed the offences on his 13-year-old sister-in-law in a room of an unnumbered house in Bau around 11am on Oct 24, this year.
He entered his sister-in-law’s bedroom and woke her up, telling her that he had brought breakfast.
Upon hearing the bedroom door closing, the victim continued to sleep as she thought the man had left her room.
When she woke up, she found her brother-in-law lying next to her, touching her breasts and private part before he proceeded to rape her although she was menstruating.
The victim lodged a police report and the man was subsequently arrested around 3.50pm on the same day.
In mitigation, the man appealed for a lenient sentence as he has elderly parents to look after.
However, DPP Mohamad Aiman Mutallib Mohamad Shariff requested for a deterrent sentence against the man considering the gravity, nature, rampancy of the offence, and that the man had committed two kinds of sexual offences against his underage family member.
The man was unrepresented by a legal counsel.