Maid gets fraction of sentence sought by prosecutor

SINGAPORE — Nearly three weeks ago, Indonesian maid Kusrini Caslan Arja was staring at the possibility of being locked up for 18 months — the sentence prosecutors had sought as her penalty for ill-treating her employer’s disabled child.

On Thursday, the 36-year-old was freed, after a judge sentenced her to an imprisonment term a fraction of what the prosecutors wanted.

Handing down a four-month jail term, District Judge Low Wee Ping noted that the prosecution had “grossly overstated” Kusrini’s culpability. “No malice was involved, and the accused was not a trained person,” he added.

The sentence was backdated to Nov 25 last year, when Kusrini was remanded for the offence, which meant her sentence was spent by Thursday. Prosecutors confirmed they would appeal against the sentence.

Kusrini was to have been sentenced on March 6 after she pleaded guilty, but the judge put the case on hold so that the maid could have a lawyer to defend against what he deemed to be a “manifestly excessive” penalty submission by the prosecutors. 

Lawyer Mahmood Gaznavi, who was in that courtroom waiting for his case to be heard that day, volunteered to act for Kusrini.

The case involved an incident on Nov 23 last year, when Kusrini was performing one of her duties in caring for a four-year-old boy with spinal muscular atrophy. 

She was supposed to use a suction machine to remove phlegm and mucus from the bedridden boy’s mouth by putting a suction cap over his nose and lips. 

That day, she noticed more phlegm and mucus and thought it would be faster and more effective to put the suction cap into his mouth.

When the cap fell into his throat accidentally, Kusrini tried to remove it with her finger, causing the boy to bleed. 

She panicked and pushed her entire hand inside his mouth to retrieve the cap for about eight minutes.

Her actions caused him to bleed profusely, and she did not inform her employers about it. 

It was only 12 hours later that the boy’s parents realised the pump container of the suction machine was filled with blood, and his heart rate was high. 

His mother, a nurse, discovered there was an object in his throat and used a pair of tweezers to remove it. 

In court on Thursday, Mr Mahmood argued that the offence was a one-off act, unlike past cases of ill-treatment of children, which spanned a sustained period of time and involved multiple offences. 

“The accused did not commit the offence out of malice, but rather, out of overzealous attempts to correct an initial act gone wrong,” he said. 

She had been working with the family for nine months, and cared for the boy “like her own”, he added. 

Noting that she has no medical training and had been employed as a domestic helper, he said: “Unfortunately, she was tasked to be a caregiver to the victim who is bedridden and her duties include the operation of devices which she does not have formal training of.” 

But Deputy Public Prosecutor Teo Lu Jia said that Kusrini had been motivated by self-preservation, and was careless to the boy’s pain and suffering. 

“He was unable to speak up for himself. She had taken advantage of his vulnerability and disability to cover up her misdeed,” she said. 

The judge ruled that there was no malice on Kusrini’s part, and noted that this case was unlike any in the past, which involved wilful acts.

Prosecutors applied for a stay of the sentence — with conditions such as a personal bond of S$2,000 and Kusrini’s passport to be held — pending appeal. 

The judge rejected this, noting that Kusrini had agreed to voluntarily hand over her passport to the police. In the meantime, she will stay at the Indonesian Embassy.