Amina Bokhary sent to psychiatric facility for assessment as trial for assault is adjourned

A Hong Kong woman from a prominent family was sent to a psychiatrist facility on Monday for assessment after she was brought to court to face assault charges on her parents.

Amina Mariam Bokhary, 42, the niece of Court of Final Appeal judge Kemal Bokhary, was arrested on Sunday, after her parents reported her for assault.

She was also wanted by police after she failed to turn up for a bail appointment last month for suspected driving offences in January.

The woman was taken to Eastern Court on Monday to face three counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, one of common assault, one of driving with a suspended licence and one of driving without a third party insurance.

According to the charges, she assaulted her mother, Rhoda Bokhary, on three occasions at their Greenville Gardens home in Happy Valley between February and March. It is also alleged she assaulted her father, Bagh Bokhary, on March 16.

Bohkary, whose maternal uncle Ronald Arculli is also a former member of the Executive Council, frowned with her arms crossed in the dock as the charges were read. She was not required to make a plea.

“Yes,” she responded in a low voice to acknowledge she understood the charges. Dressed in a white T-shirt, she tried to push her hands up her sleeve.

Principal Magistrate Peter Law Tak-chuen refused her bail, despite an offer of HK$30,000 by her barrister Robert Pang Yiu-hung SC.

Law adjourned the case to April 1 and, at the prosecutors’ request, sought psychiatric reports for Bohkary, to assess whether she is fit to plea. He ordered that she be remanded at Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre.

Bohkary had been wanted by Hong Kong police since February when she failed to report for a bail appointment with the police, following an earlier arrest for driving with a suspended licence and without third-party insurance.

Her parents filed a complaint at a police station on Sunday morning and officers returned with her father to the family home in Shiu Fai Terrace on Stubbs Road, Happy Valley, and arrested Bokhary.

She appeared emotional, prompting officers to restrain her and take her to Ruttonjee Hospital in Wan Chai.

On January 31, she was pulled over on King Kwong Street in Happy Valley after a police patrol team saw her car being driven in an erratic manner. She was arrested for driving with a suspended licence and without third-party insurance.