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Updated: 09/09/2013 17:40 | By Channel NewsAsia
Man jailed, fined for unlawful possession of ICs
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SINGAPORE: A nightclub manager was on Monday sentenced to one day's jail and fined S$6,000 for having a stack of Singapore identity cards (ICs) that did not belong to him.
The ICs were found in the glove compartment of a car belonging to 31-year-old Darry Kong Jun Kang.
The prosecution proceeded on a first charge involving 12 ICs, while a second charge involving another five ICs was taken into consideration.
Most of the ICs had previously been reported as lost or stolen.
According to court documents, the manager of a car repair workshop had reported finding the ICs in Kong's car in December 2012.
Kong had sent the car to the workshop for repairs in May 2012 but did not collect the vehicle for several months after that.
The workshop staff were also unable to contact him on a phone number he had left behind and they found the ICs during a search for other contact details in his car.
In mitigation, Kong had said the ICs were passed to him by a childhood friend whom he had met while working as a delivery driver.
The friend had passed him the ICs to hold on to and had promised to come for them the next day.
However, the friend did not show up and could not be located subsequently. Kong then left the ICs in his car and forgot about them until he was arrested by police officers.
Kong's lawyer John Abraham had also pointed out that his client had merely possessed the ICs and had not stolen them to commit an offence which caused harm to another person or to the public.
In meting out the sentence, District Judge Shaiffudin Saruwan said he accepted what Kong said, but noted nonetheless that the offence still warranted a "nominal" custodial sentence to signal that such an offence is serious and will not be tolerated.
Kong could have been jailed up to 10 years and fined S$10,000. - CNA/gn
