PUBLIC PROSECUTOR v Yeo Liang Hou & Nagaiah Rao A/L Alumanar

Facts

Yeo Liang Hou and Nagaiah Rao a/l Alumanar were tried together in Criminal Case No 15 of 2021 on capital charges under the Misuse of Drugs Act involving three packets found to contain not less than 669.3g of methamphetamine. Nagaiah was charged with delivering the drugs to Yeo, and Yeo with having them in his possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Nagaiah entered Singapore from Malaysia in a Malaysian-registered white van on the evening of 5 March 2018. At about 2.18am on 6 March 2018, police camera footage showed the driver of a white van placing a plastic bag in a dustbin at a bus stop at Oasis LRT Station in Punggol. At about 2.35am Yeo drove up, took a plastic bag from the dustbin and drove to a nearby block. When officers of the Central Narcotics Bureau drove past, he drove off, throwing two bundles out of his car windows. He was arrested shortly afterwards, and the bundles were recovered. Nagaiah left Singapore later that morning and was arrested on 7 March 2018.

Yeo admitted ordering methamphetamine from a supplier he called Danny, intending to sell it, but said the bundles were a wrong delivery and not his order. He also argued in the alternative that if only one bundle was his, the quantity was below the capital threshold. Nagaiah, who did not deny earlier work as a drug courier, denied being the driver on this occasion.

Issues

1. Whether Yeo's defence that the drugs were wrongly delivered to him raised a reasonable doubt on possession and knowledge.
2. Whether Yeo possessed the drugs for the purpose of trafficking.
3. Whether the circumstantial evidence proved beyond reasonable doubt that Nagaiah placed the bag of drugs in the dustbin.
4. Whether Nagaiah rebutted the presumptions of possession and knowledge of the nature of the drugs.

Holding

Pang Khang Chau J convicted both accused. For Nagaiah, the judge found his involvement limited to that of a courier and noted the Public Prosecutor's certificate of substantive assistance, and sentenced him to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane, to run from 7 March 2018, the date of his arrest. Yeo did not qualify for the alternative sentencing regime, so the judge imposed the mandatory death sentence. Both appealed.

Reasoning

On Yeo, the judge found the wrong delivery defence no more than a fanciful doubt. Two passers-by at the bus stop never lifted the dustbin cover. Yeo had never before received more than 250g at a time, so two bundles gave him no basis to think the 350g he expected was not his. His account of repeated calls with Danny was not borne out by telco or phone records, and the judge drew an adverse inference from his failure to provide the passcode to one phone. Throwing away drugs he had already paid for, without first calling Danny, made no sense, and where one bundle was found showed he threw it after driving off. Yeo had also given three inconsistent accounts. The judge found he discarded the drugs to distance himself from them once he realised the bureau's officers were onto him. Actual possession and knowledge were proved, the trafficking presumption applied, and Yeo did not try to rebut it.

On Nagaiah, the case was wholly circumstantial because no one identified the driver. His DNA was on the outside of the bag, which his explanations could not account for. Two photographs of a dustbin on his phone were taken at 2.14am at coordinates matching the block in front of the bus stop; his challenges to the phone's clock and the dustbin's position failed. Immigration records showed he was in Singapore at the time. The judge gave no weight to officers' sightings of the van's number plate. Together, the strands led inexorably to Nagaiah as the driver. Proof of delivery triggered the presumption of possession, and since his defence was only denial, he rebutted neither that presumption nor the presumption of knowledge.

From the judgment