A 37-year-old Bangladeshi man was jailed for one year by a Singapore court on Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to two counts of outrage of modesty, having molested two schoolgirls in the country’s subway train system.
Ray Chandan, a Bangladeshi national who had been working in the construction industry in Singapore, molested two girls on two occasions, in May and in July, The Straits Times reported.
At 6:50am on May 11, he boarded a train at Sembawang MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station, where he approached a 17-year-old girl while she was busy with her mobile phone and touched her private parts over her clothes.
The girl stepped back but that did not prevent the man from continuing his indecent act. She filed a report to the police with a picture of the suspect, which she had taken secretly before getting off at Yio Chu Kang station.
At 6:35am on July 12, Chandan again got on a train at Sembawang station, and during the trip he stood close to a 13-year-old girl and rested his hand on her pelvis.
He did not stop pressing on her body despite the fact that the girl had pushed his hands away and tried to put some distance between them.
Chandan did not remove his hands until the train arrived at Yishun station, where the victim got off. The girl reported the incident to her teacher and later to the police.
The court heard that Chandan would deliberately travel between Yishun and Khatib stations, as the MRT trains on that route were usually crowded with commuters during the morning peak, giving him the best chance to molest teenage girls in school uniforms.