Today, another 5 bus ticket touts (ulat kutu tiket) from Puduraya bus station was charged before me. 2 pleaded not guilty and another 3 pleaded guilty. I granted a mention date for the 2 who claimed trial and after contemplating for a while in my chambers, I granted RM 5000, RM7000 and RM15,000 fine each.
The different thing is that I granted them leave to pay the fine by installments. So I gave a mention date for the period of time which I thought would be necessary for them to pay and not be sent to prison.
I realized that by granting an installment leave, it sort of dilutes the umph of the sentence. It did not sound as drastic as the first sentence that I gave. However, one of the offender was smart enough to ask me for such order. Knowing me, I always like to try and venture the scope of the law before me, I allowed his prayers. Since there were 3 to be sentenced, I allowed installments for all three. Why the discrimination right?
I was of the opinion that if I want to jail these offenders, I might as well fix imprisonment sentence. The reason why I imposed fine sentences was because I did not want them to go to jail. So I am willing to allow them to pay via installments.
In the end, only the chap who asked for installments managed to make the first payment. The other two couldn’t even afford the first installment. So out of three touts, one is partially free (if he manages to pay all of the installments on time) and two are on the way now to join the first tout I sentenced about a week ago.
Blog adjourned!
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