Woman charged for assaulting police, insulting staff, not wearing mask at Sun Plaza
UPDATE: Kasturi Govindasamy Retnamsamy was charged on Saturday.
SINGAPORE — A 40-year-old Singaporean woman was charged on Saturday (9 May) for not wearing her face mask properly, assaulting a police officer and insulting staff at the Sun Plaza mall.
Kasturi Govindasamy Retnamsamy was handed five charges for the offences, which include using abusive words such as “COVID-19 is because of you Chinese” and “scan the IC b***h” at police officers and mall staff.
She has been remanded at Institute of Mental Health for psychiatric observation. Her next hearing will be on 22 May.
Refused to wear mask properly at mall
In a post put on up on the Singapore Police Force Facebook page on Friday, police said that they received a request for assistance from a crowd management staff deployed by Sun Plaza at about 2.10pm on Thursday.
The staff said that a woman was uncooperative and refused to wear her mask properly at the mall. Despite repeated requests made by the staff to wear her mask properly, she refused to do so.
The woman also insulted the staff and hurled vulgarities at a security officer who came to assist. Her actions were filmed and circulated around online social media platforms, showing her taunting a mall employee, asking him to remove his face mask to speak to her.
When the police officers arrived and requested for her identity, the woman started peeling off the address sticker on her identity card. When one of the police officers tried to stop her, the woman assaulted the officer and remained uncooperative. She was subsequently arrested.
Already fined before for not wearing mask
The woman will be charged in court on Saturday for voluntarily causing hurt to deter a public servant from carrying out his or her duty, and for using insulting or abusive language with an intention to cause harassment to another person.
If found guilty of the first offence, she can be jailed up to seven years, and shall also be liable to a fine or to caning. If she is found guilty of the second offence, she can be jailed up to six months and/or fined up to $5,000.
The woman will also be investigated for not wearing her mask properly under the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) (Control Order) Regulations 2020. She has already been fined $300 for not wearing a mask at the same mall on 29 April.
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