Lagatar24 Desk
Singapore, Dec.24: Two men, one of Indian descent, were convicted on Friday of participating in a gang robbery at a shophouse in Singapore’s Little India precinct in 2017, during which they stole SGD 300,000.
Indian-origin Thava Kumaran Ramamutty (37) and Malay-origin Muhammad Ridzuan Bin Mohammad Yusof, 32, were both found guilty after defending two accusations of housebreaking by night and robbery.
Both will appear in court for mitigation and sentencing on January 25.
Thava, Ridzuan, and three accomplices targeted four Bangladeshi citizens who were involved in an unlawful remittance scheme on December 11, 2017.
With a key obtained from an informant, the robbers broke into the shophouse at 3 a.m.
They pretended to be police officials from the Criminal Investigation Department and accosted the victims in a shophouse along Rowell Road, in a popular South Asian shopping district with shops, shophouses, hotels, and eateries.
They held the four victims captive and took the money, which had been collected from Bangladeshi citizens working in Singapore who wanted to send money home to their family.
After then, the five of them departed in a hired automobile with forged licence plates.
Thava arrived in Malaysia on December 29 on a 30-day social visit pass. He was arrested in Johor Bahru, a Malaysian city near Singapore, in April 2018 after overstaying his visa.
The Royal Malaysian Police apprehended him together with another accomplice, Shanker Maghalingam, who had entered Malaysia illegally by a motorised boat from Changi Creek in Singapore. After then, the two were extradited to Singapore.
Shanker, Juraimi Jupri, and Nor Mohamad Azril Sajali, three of the five robbers, have pled guilty to their crimes.
Three more conspirators have admitted to renting the getaway car and affixing the false licence plate to it. Valerie Emmanuelle Ramanee, Udaya Kumar Manoker, and Mohamed Safit Hasan Mohamed Ayub are the individuals in question.
Their cases have all been resolved, with the exception of Thava’s and Ridzuan’s, which are still pending in the courts.
Alamgir Md and Sikder Sujan, two of the guys who ran the unlawful remittance firm, have also pleaded guilty to providing the unlicensed service.
An offender who breaks into a house at night faces a sentence of up to three years in prison and a fine. For a gang heist involving five or more people, each perpetrator faces a sentence of five to twenty years in prison and at least 12 strokes of the cane.
