ITE student who stabbed schoolmate during overhead bridge fight gets probation
SINGAPORE: A former Institute of Technical Education (ITE) student was sentenced to 21 months' probation on Monday (Dec 16) for slashing a schoolmate and stabbing her on an overhead bridge near their school.
Tusheta Saravanan, 18, who has been expelled, was also ordered to perform 180 hours of community service, while her mother had to put up a bond of S$5,000 to ensure her good behaviour.
Tusheta had pleaded guilty to one charge of voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapon, with another two charges of possessing a weapon and filching the victim's gold pendant taken into consideration.
The court heard that Tusheta was crossing the overhead bridge along Bukit Batok Road near ITE College West with two of her friends past noon on Feb 21 this year.
They crossed paths with the victim, 17-year-old Logeswari Natarajah, and her three friends.
Tusheta, who was drinking a bottle of green tea, splashed some of the liquid on Logeswari as she passed, and the two girls began arguing.
The victim left, but Tusheta stayed on the bridge and smoked with her friends. She said she was worried that Logeswari would return, and transferred a foldable knife with an 8cm-long blade from her sock to her jacket pocket.
Five to 10 minutes later, Logeswari returned to the bridge with a cup of Milo and confronted Tusheta about what had happened.
They began quarrelling, and Logeswari splashed the Milo on Tusheta's face.
The two girls began scuffling, and Tusheta pulled out her knife from her jacket and slashed the other teenager's arm and stabbed her abdomen.
The friends of both girls intervened when they realised one of them had been stabbed.
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Tusheta later picked up a gold pendant from the floor that had come loose during the fight and passed it to a friend for safekeeping, intending to sell it later.
Logeswari sought treatment at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital that day and was found with a 1cm laceration on her arm and a 4cm laceration on her abdomen.
The police received a message from the Singapore Civil Defence Force about the incident and investigated, seizing the knife and pendant among other items from Tusheta.
For voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapon, she could have been jailed for up to seven years, fined, caned, or given any combination of these punishments.