CNB officer accused of assaulting man to force drug confession
File photo of Singapore's State Courts. (Photo: CNA/Jeremy Long)
SINGAPORE: An officer with the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) has been accused of assaulting a man in order to obtain a confession from him about drugs found in his bag.
Vengedesh Raj Nainar Nagarajan, 32, was charged on Friday (Oct 4) with three counts of voluntarily causing hurt to extort a confession from the victim.
According to charge sheets, all three offences occurred on Jan 2, 2017, in a toilet of an office on the third floor at Woodlands Checkpoint CNB Block B.
Vengedesh is accused of attacking the man, Sivabalan Kanniappan, three times between 6am and 9am that day.
He is said to have kicked, punched and slapped Sivabalan in order to get him to confess that he knew about two bundles of drugs found in his raincoat bag.
According to charge sheets, Vengedesh also wanted Sivabalan to confess that one of the bundles contained heroin.
Vengedesh was offered bail of S$15,000 and will return to court on Nov 1.
If found guilty of voluntarily causing hurt to extort a confession, he could be jailed for up to seven years and fined or caned.
In response to queries, CNB said that the officer has been "interdicted from service" since Saturday.
The bureau also said that it does not condone any misconduct by officers, and takes a serious view of all complaints against them.
"In the course of investigations into a drug importation case, we discovered possible serious misconduct by one of our CNB officers against the accused person," said a CNB spokesperson in response to queries about the case.Â
"We referred the matter immediately to the Singapore Police Force (SPF), and CNB provided full cooperation to SPF during their investigations," the spokesperson added.
