PULARA DEVMINIE SOMACHANDRA

Facts

Ms Pulara Devminie Somachandra, a 28-year-old law graduate of a United Kingdom university, applied in Admission of Advocates and Solicitors No 561 of 2023 to be admitted to the Singapore Bar. In the remotely held Evidence Law paper of the Part A Bar Examinations on 21 October 2020, she submitted three identical scripts before the deadline and then, after reporting a submission problem, a fourth at 11.48am with a much fuller answer to Question 1. Her script and that of another candidate showed 80% similarity and 32 blocks of matching text, and both alone wrongly cited s 6 of the Sedition Act. She said the two had used a jointly prepared document of stock paragraphs that neither could produce. The Board of Examiners found that she had collaborated and failed her in the paper; she said she vehemently disagreed, and she later passed both parts of the examinations.

Her admission affidavit of 17 October 2023 disclosed neither this finding nor three earlier university investigations, in 2018 and 2019, into plagiarism in her work, the last of which resulted in a finding of moderate plagiarism and a 20-mark penalty. She disclosed the Part A finding only when the Singapore Institute of Legal Education asked, initially withheld consent for the university to release its records, and disclosed the university matters only after the Attorney-General's Chambers learned of one of them. The Attorney-General, the Institute and the Law Society objected to her admission and all sought dismissal with a five-year exclusionary period.

Issues

1. Whether the application should be dismissed or the applicant permitted to withdraw it.
2. Whether the applicant's misconduct and failures of disclosure showed that she was not a fit and proper person to be admitted.
3. What minimum period should pass before she could re-apply, and whether it could exceed five years.

Holding

The court dismissed the application for admission, ordered a minimum exclusionary period of five years before any fresh application, and made no order as to costs.

Reasoning

It was common ground by the hearing that she was not fit and proper. Only when the court indicated it would otherwise have to make a finding did she accept, for the first time, that she had collaborated; the court said the evidence of collaboration was compelling in any event, and she still could not explain the late, fuller fourth script. The university matters followed the same theme of passing off others' work as her own, and her explanations, including missing documents she said she had received from classmates, echoed the story she gave the Institute. Her claim that she believed the Part A finding need not be disclosed was contradicted by the Institute's officer, whose account the court found more credible; any doubt about disclosure must in any case be resolved in favour of disclosing.

The court found she disclosed matters only when she had no choice, and had overstated the university's extenuating-circumstances finding, which related only to late submission. Her belated admission received no weight, and volunteering alone did not show that rehabilitation had meaningfully begun. Following Re Gabriel Silas Tang Rafferty [2024] 4 SLR 401, dismissal rather than withdrawal was appropriate where an applicant had not begun to appreciate her wrongdoing.

The court considered her conduct more serious than in earlier cases where five years was imposed, and held it had power to impose a longer period. It nonetheless settled on five years because she was young and because the period only fixes when her suitability will be reviewed afresh; any future application would need strong evidence of genuine change in character.

From the judgment