Singapore:
An Indian-origin man has been sentenced to eight years in jail and ordered to be given five strokes of the cane for selling cannabis to foreign students at an international school in Singapore.
39-year-old Selvam V Katorain yesterday pleaded guilty in the district court to trafficking and consumption of drug charges in 2011, the Straits Times reported today.
Katorain was identified by one of the 15 students of the international school, who were arrested during an island-wide raid by the Central Narcotics Bureau in September 2011.
Deputy Public Prosecutor Terence Chua told the court that Katorain had not learnt his lesson from his 2001 sentence of seven years corrective training for drug trafficking and consuming.
"He has not learnt his lesson and the punishment this time should be more severe," the prosecutor told the court.
But defence counsel V Ramesh pointed out that the students were already consuming drugs.
"My client did not introduce them to cannabis," he said.
When Selvam was arrested near his Ang Mo Kio home on September 7, 2011, a urine test indicated that he had smoked the drug earlier.