Teen who implicated friend and lied to police given reformative training
A teenager who committed a robbery and falsely implicated a friend for the offence was sentenced to reformative training on Tuesday (25 June).
Syed Muhammad Nazmi Syed Abdullah, 18, was convicted on 11 May 2016 for robbery, which he committed on 15 May the year before, and was already serving time at the Reformative Training Centre (RTC) for the original offence. A stint at the RTC is imposed on offenders below 21 and lasts between 18 and 30 months.
Before his conviction for robbery, Nazmi decided to falsely accuse a friend, who wasn’t present at the scene of the crime, of also being involved in the offence. His friend was subsequently charged and remanded for the wrongful accusation.
Nazmi was slapped with three counts of giving false information to Singapore Police Force (SPF) officers, causing the officers to prosecute another man, Mohamad Razif Ghani. The prosecution proceeded on one count while the other two were taken into account during sentencing.
After Nazmi was arrested by police officers for his robbery offence on 1 July 2015, he gave a number of police statements that implicated his friend Razif. Nazmi alleged that Razif had kicked the robbery victim.
While giving a statement at Yishun North Neighbourhood Police Centre at around 2.20pm, Nazmi told a staff sergeant that in April 2015, Razif had punched and kicked an Indian man, who was the robbery victim, at a field near Block 288 Yishun at around 2am.
Later the same day, Nazmi repeated the same story to a station inspector at the Ang Mo Kio Police Divisional HQ. He gave the same false information to the inspector again on 8 July 2015.
Due to Nazmi’s misinformation, the police arrested Razif on 1 July 2015. Razif was charged for his alleged involvement in the robbery and remanded from 3 to 10 July 2015. He was released on bail afterwards and his case was fixed for trial from 9 to 11 November 2016.
The truth came to light five days before Razif’s trial was due to begin. On 4 November 2016, Nazmi admitted that he had falsely implicated Razif during an interview in a prison. He confessed that Razif was even present during the robbery and that he had maligned Razif because he was unhappy with him over a quarrel.
The charge against Razif was withdrawn on 9 November 2016 more than a year after he had been charged.
For giving wrong information to a public servant with the intention of causing the public servant to act against another person, Nazmi could have been jailed up to a year and/or fined $5,000.
