PUBLIC PROSECUTOR v DAN

Case Significance

Public Prosecutor v DAN [2024] SGHC 250 was decided by Aidan Xu @ Aedit Abdullah J in the General Division of the High Court, which heard the matter on 30 April and 9 July 2024 and delivered its grounds of decision on 1 October 2024 in Criminal Case No 19 of 2023. The accused, the father of a five-year-old girl referred to in the judgment as Ayeesha, was found to have killed her by repeated blows to her face after abusing her over a prolonged period, including slapping, punching, caning and kicking her and confining her to a toilet in the kitchen for nearly ten months; he also abused her brother, referred to as [R], who is protected by a gag order. The court recorded that the abuse began in 2015 when the child was three and that she died about two years later.

The accused pleaded guilty to a total of six charges, with 20 charges taken into consideration for sentencing. The charges engaged the offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under section 304(a) of the Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev Ed), an offence under section 201 of the Penal Code, and statutory offences under the Children and Young Persons Act (Cap 38, 2001 Rev Ed). The prosecution was conducted by counsel from the Attorney-General's Chambers, including Han Ming Kuang, Derek Ee, Maximilian Chew and Norine Tan, while the accused was represented by counsel from Advocatus Law LLP, Fleet Street Law LLC and Peter Low Chambers LLC, including Cheong Jun Ming Mervyn, Krishna Ramakrishna Sharma, Lim Yi Zheng and Loh Guo Wei Melvin.