Man released from jail early due to error, surrenders to serve time as State Courts conduct 'thorough review'

SINGAPORE: A man who was sentenced to jail over an altercation with the police was released on the same day he was sentenced due to an error in calculating the jail term.

Mr Muhammad Fathurrahman Mohd Adzlan was contacted and returned to jail four days later to complete his sentence.

In a statement to CNA on Friday (Jan 30), a spokesperson from the judiciary said Mr Muhammad was sentenced to 32 weeks' jail on Oct 27, 2025. 

However, this was erroneously reflected as 20 weeks.

WHAT HE DID

According to court papers seen by CNA, Mr Muhammad, then 31, had made a 995 call saying: "If committing suicide is an offence … Singaporeans behave like ISIS how? ... Police can't do anything ... You will be receiving more calls later on and some will be fire related."

Police officers who were deployed to look for Mr Muhammad found him at Pasir Ris Polyclinic on Jul 14, 2025.

While the police were checking his particulars, Mr Muhammad began behaving aggressively, court papers stated.

He subsequently refused to sit down and calm down, shouting that "police are always disturbing me" and calling one of the officers a "coward", "ISIS" and "terrorist".

While the police officers were trying to arrest him, Mr Muhammad struggled violently, punching one of them in the mouth and the other on his right temple.

He was later remanded at the Institute of Mental Health and found to be suffering from antisocial personality disorder, which had no contributory link to his offending.

However, he was observed to have a high risk of recidivism and demonstrated a "pattern of confrontational behaviour towards authority figures".

Mr Muhammad was charged with voluntarily causing hurt to a public servant, and an offence under the Protection from Harassment Act.

THE ERROR

According to the judiciary, when Mr Muhammad was sentenced on Oct 27, 2025, his jail term of 32 weeks was erroneously reflected as 20 weeks instead.

This was because the sentences ordered to run consecutively were mistakenly recorded as having been ordered to run concurrently, due to "an error in the preparation of the warrant of commitment", the judiciary spokesperson said.

The warrant of commitment is a court order directing law enforcement to incarcerate a person.

This resulted in Mr Muhammad being released on Oct 27, 2025 itself, after the court took into account the period that he had previously spent on remand.

"The error was identified promptly and Mr Muhammad was contacted, upon which he voluntarily returned to court on Oct 31, 2025 to serve out his remaining sentence," said the judiciary spokesperson.

She added that he has since completed serving his imprisonment term and that the total time he spent in custody complies with the imprisonment term ordered by the sentencing judge.

"This incident did not result in him serving any additional time in prison, nor did it result in the time spent by him in prison falling short of what had been ordered," said the spokesperson.

She said the State Courts have taken this matter seriously and conducted a thorough review.

"Process improvements have been implemented to prevent similar administrative errors," she added.

Mr Muhammad told Stomp in an article published on Thursday that he believes he is the first person in Singapore to be "accidentally" released from jail and was "proud".

He was previously jailed in March 2024 for stalking his former counsellor and insulting a preschool teacher.

In 2020, a lorry driver served two extra days of jail due to an error made by an officer from the State Courts.

He was later jailed again in 2023 for fresh offences.