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TODAY

A 26-year-old Indian national was sentenced to seven months’ jail on Tuesday for kissing a 15-year-old girl on the lips and forcing her to perform a sex act on him.
Chellam Rajesh Kannan, who met the girl through social media platform Instagram, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a young person.
Another two charges, including wrongful restraint, were taken into consideration for sentencing.
His victim, now aged 16, cannot be named due to a gag order to protect her identity. 
The court heard that he approached her on Instagram sometime last year and sent a request to follow her account.
They began messaging each other on the platform with Chellam, who is married and has a young daughter, knowing she was a minor. 
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In August last year, they met in person for the first time and he bought her a packet of cigarettes. 
She agreed to meet him again the next month at her housing and development block along Yishun Avenue 11.
Three days before their second meeting, she asked Chellam if he could help to buy bottles of cider for her to share with her friends. 
When they met at her block of flats on September 8, he passed her the bottles and asked her to follow him to a staircase landing.
There, she turned down his request for a kiss, but he persisted while reminding her that he had helped her to buy alcohol.
She eventually kissed him once on the lips before pulling away.
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He then unzipped his pants. She tried to leave but he held onto her hand and forced her to masturbate him for three minutes. Afterwards, he quickly left.
In mitigation, Chellam said he felt “very remorseful and shameful” and had not committed any other offences in the past three years of working in Singapore. 
He was previously a safety coordinator.
“I have gone through lots of suffering in this case. I lost my job, I miss my family, my wife and (two-year-old) daughter … Mine is a love marriage and my wife is on her own,” he added in Tamil through an interpreter.
District Judge Shawn Ho said that a stiff sentence was warranted as Chellam had exerted “pressure and coercion” on the victim.
The sentence was backdated to his date of remand, August 18 this year.
For sexual exploitation of a young person, he could have been fined up to S$10,000 (US$7,378) or jailed up to five years, or both.
Read the original article at Today Online


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The 26-year-old Indian national, who is married, was jailed for seven months for sexual exploitation of the girl, 15
He knew she was a minor when they began messaging each other on Instagram last year



The 26-year-old Indian national, who is married, was jailed for seven months for sexual exploitation of the girl, 15.


Crime

Sexual harassment and assault