BKT Lover Allegedly Lied About Officer Telling Him SHN Starts The Next Day; DPP Suggested 3-Month Imprisonment

Do you remember the dude who went out to eat Bak Kut Teh while on a 14-day Stay-Home-Notice, then bragged about it online?

Well, turns out he has been convicted on 16 Apr 2020 after pleading guilty to an offence under the Infectious Diseases Act.

The 34-year-old man, Alan Tham Xiang Sheng, is the first person in Singapore to be charged for exposing other people to the risk of infection.

Prosecutors are asking for the judge to sentence him to “10 to 12 weeks” jail.

That’s right, they want to imprison him for three months.

He Had Lied About Officer’s Instructions

After his Facebook post went viral, Tham told the media that he didn’t know the SHN started immediately.

He thought it started from Day 1, which is the next day.

In his original Facebook post, when his friends asked how he could leave the house while on SHN, he claimed that he was told that by a customs officer.

Well, it turns out that he could be lying about that too.

Officer Did Not Tell Him SHN Starts The Next Day

The prosecutors gave an outline of what happened in court.

Tham arrived at Changi Airport T3 on 23 Mar 2020.

He cleared customs and went to a hall where an Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) officer asked about his travel history.

After he furnished his details, he was issued with a stay-home notice (SHN) which informed him that he as to stay at home for 14 days.

The notice also detailed the conditions of the SHN:

• That he has to minimise contact with others
• To not have visitors at his place
• And he has to be at home at all times during the two-week period

Tham proceeded to sign the acknowledgement slip to confirm that he understood the SHN requirements and that he could be charged if found to have breached them.

“At no point in time did (the ICA officer) make any representation to the accused that the stay-home notice commenced on Day 1 of his arrival, which is Mar 24.”

Lawyers Said SHN Wasn’t Clear Enough

Meanwhile, lawyers Josephus Tan and Cory Wong from Invictus Law Corporation, who are representing Tham, is asking for him to be given the maximum fine of $10,000.

The SHN, they said, didn’t specify that their client must go home immediately after receiving it.

It also didn’t “impose any movement restrictions” on their client before it reached home.

In other words, what they’re trying to say is, the SHN also didn’t say must go home immediately.

Tham has allegedly been to four places while he was on SHN: Koufu Food Centre at Changi Airport Terminal 3, Peninsula Plaza, Kampung Admiralty Foodfare Hawker Centre (the place with the best-est bak kut teh) and NTUC FairPrice Kampung Admiralty in Block 676, Woodlands Drive 71.

Two of them (Koufu Food Centre at Changi Airport T3 and Peninsula Plaza) were visited before he reached home.

And the remaining two (Kampung Admiralty Foodfare Hawker Centre and NTUC FairPrice Kampung Admiralty in Blk 676) after.

His sentencing will take place on 23 Apr 2020.