Alleged rapist denies charge, claims victim had died
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SINGAPORE — First, he told the police that he had wanted to scare his 40-year-old victim into having sex with him in a forested area at MacRitchie Reservoir.
Then, in a statement to an Institute of Mental Health (IMH) psychiatrist, Pramanik Liton claimed that he and his victim knew each other.
On Thursday (May 18), while defending himself in court without a lawyer, the 24-year-old Bangladeshi construction worker changed his tune and said he did not know the victim. He also insisted that he did not even touch her, and bizarrely told the court that the victim had “died” after he merely tried to scare her.
The victim, a China national who cannot be named on court order, is still alive and had testified in court on Wednesday. The accused’s testimony was slammed by the prosecution as “highly incredible, bereft of truth and ... totally unbelievable”.
Liton, who is on trial for alleged abduction and rape, is accused of raping the woman twice on Feb 8, 2015, and forcing her to perform other sex acts on him.
Testifying with the help of a Bengali interpreter, Liton said that he and the woman were walking along the same direction, then he followed her and he “made a sound” and “tried to scare her”. “I tried to scare her by shouting. After that, the girl passed away. She died,” Liton said.
Asked by Justice Choo Han Teck how he knew the victim was dead, Liton answered: “She died out of fear ... the way Man dies.”
The accused was cross-examined by Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) Stella Tan for close to an hour, where he calmly insisted — despite repeated questioning — that he did not possess any knife, and that he did not lay his hand on the woman or rape her. He denied earlier statements made to the police, but agreed with the prosecution that he did not know the victim before their encounter at the reservoir.
On Tuesday, the prosecution told the court that Liton had accosted the woman and asked her to have sex with him. When she rejected him, he placed a knife against her neck and covered her nose and mouth, before taking her to a forested area where he committed the alleged offences.
On Thursday, DPP Tan noted in her closing statement that Liton had even denied that he was at the scene during the trial.
She reiterated that his latest version of the incident was “clearly ... not the case”, since the victim, who had been in court to testify and had given a “blow-by-blow account” of the incident, “had identified the accused as the one who had raped her”.
DPP Tan also said of the victim: “You’ve seen her demeanour in court. There was a palpable fear ... Until today , she is still afraid of the accused. The victim testified that she had nightmares for months after.”
Earlier in the morning, the remaining 13 of the 37 prosecution witnesses took the stand to testify.
While Liton had no questions for most of them, he disputed details in a report by IMH psychiatrist Jason Lee. Dr Lee had stated that Liton’s education qualification was equivalent to the GCE O-Level, and that he was married to a 19-year-old for two years.
Liton objected, saying that he had six years of education, and was single.
The High Court judge is expected to deliver his verdict on Friday.
If convicted of aggravated rape, Liton faces at least eight years in jail and a minimum of 12 strokes of the cane, for each charge.
