Executive beaten up by gang alleged to have been involved in love triangle

A newspaper executive who was hit with water pipes during a Tsim Sha Tsui gang assault in March was alleged to be the third party in an extramarital affair, a court heard yesterday.

The affair was the reason given to one of her four attackers, Chung Wai-chung, 22, for the plot to beat her up, the District Court heard.

The victim, Lei Iun-han, 46, turned out to be working for a Chinese-language newspaper, the Hong Kong Morning News, slated to be launched about four months later. Lei had said she was nobody's mistress and had no money disputes with anyone.

Chung, a kitchen worker, pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of inflicting grievous bodily harm by raining blows on Lei outside the Science Museum on Granville Road on March 19.

He claimed he did not know her, but that another woman, whom he met at a pub two months earlier, sent him a photograph and arranged for him to carry out the gang beating.

During his interview with the police, "Chung claimed a female friend known as May asked him to beat [Lei] in revenge for the extramarital affair with her husband", prosecutor Franco Kuan Bak-on said.