A Singaporean woman was ordered to sit in jail after she admitted to providing false information so that her daughter could be enrolled into a popular primary school.
She pleaded guilty to one charge of giving false information to public servants and giving false information when reporting her change of address back in September.
A third charge was also taken into consideration during sentencing, reported CNA.
Lied about address when enrolling daughter
According to case facts, the 42-year-old accused, who cannot be named due to a gag order, lived mostly with her partner and her eight-year-old daughter at another address.
She also owned a Housing and Development Board (HDB) flat, which she had been leasing out for about two years since 2023.
When the the 2023 Primary 1 registration exercise came, the accused enrolled her daughter into the school via priority admission based on the distance of their home to the school.
However, she used the address of the HDB flat she was leasing out, which was located within a 1km radius of the school, despite the fact that she wasn’t living there.
In June 2024, the accused sent an email to the school requesting a change of address and gave her partner’s address, which was beyond 2km of the school’s radius.
When she was informed that her request would violate the 30-month stay requirement for students who enrolled via the priority admission, the accused rescinded her request, reported AsiaOne.
Dodgy tactics during spot-checks
When the school’s vice-principal went to the accused’s declared address in August 2024 for verification purposes, the latter allegedly told tenants to shut the flat’s windows from 7am to 11pm.
She also told tenants to tell the school authorities that she and her daughter lived at the flat as well.
Following multiple failed attempts to verify the accused’s address, the school informed her that her daughter will be transferred out of the school in October 2024. A police report was also made the following month.
‘I just want to protect my daughter’
When the accused appeared in court on Sept 24, she was unrepresented as she couldn’t afford a lawyer and was facing a S$10,000 fine (approx. RM31,700) being requested by the prosecution.
In mitigation, she pleaded for leniency and claimed her actions merely stemmed from her desire to protect her daughter.
“I hope for a lighter fine so I can support my children, especially my daughter, when she had went through so much.
All I do, I just want to protect my daughter. Your honour, I cannot go to jail. Because if I go to jail there’s no support for my two children.”
In making her ruling, District Judge Sharmila Sripathy-Shanaz said the accused’s culpability was high, and that her deception was “conscious and deliberate” and driven by “pure self-interest”.
As such, she believed a jail sentence was warranted and ordered the accused to be imprisoned for a week.
Upon hearing the sentence, the accused pleaded for a fine to be imposed but it was rejected by the judge, who said the decision was final.
The accused then said that she would be appealing her sentence to the High Court.
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