Muhammad Ramzaan s/o Akhbar v Public Prosecutor

On 6 January 2020 the appellant, Muhammad Ramzaan s/o Akhbar, was convicted of drug charges under the Misuse of Drugs Act and sentenced to three years' imprisonment. He was allowed to defer the sentence and told to surrender on 31 January 2020, but he absconded from bail. Between January 2020 and January 2021 he committed a series of drug and traffic offences. He was arrested on 26 January 2021 and began serving his first sentence that day.

On 25 July 2022 he pleaded guilty to 14 charges, including drug consumption and possession charges, speeding charges and a charge under s 65 of the Road Traffic Act, with 14 more taken into consideration. The District Judge imposed a global sentence of 5 years and 27 days' imprisonment and 3 strokes of the cane, plus disqualification from driving for 20 months. The imprisonment was to start when the first sentence expired, and the disqualification on his release from prison. He appealed in Magistrate's Appeal No 9144 of 2022, arguing that both should run from his conviction date.

1. Whether the individual or global sentences were manifestly excessive
2. Whether the imprisonment term should commence on the date of conviction rather than on expiry of the earlier sentence
3. Whether the disqualification order should commence on the date of conviction rather than on release from prison

The appellant did not challenge the length of the sentences, and the court found none manifestly excessive. The two drug sentences were statutory minimums, short jail terms for the traffic charges were justified by his eight previous traffic convictions and inability to pay fines, and the global sentence was lower than what his own counsel had sought below.

On the start date of imprisonment, the appellant relied on an unreported later decision in the Sultan case. With no written grounds explaining it, the court gave it little weight. The new offences arose from a different transaction, his criminality was high, a joint hearing would have produced a similar total, and he offended while absconding from bail. There was no basis to interfere.

On disqualification, Muhammad Saiful bin Ismail v Public Prosecutor [2014] 2 SLR 1028 says that where imprisonment and disqualification arise from separate offences, disqualification may run from conviction. The court found good reasons to depart from that here: his many driving offences and antecedents called for specific deterrence; running from conviction would make the 20-month ban wholly nugatory given the longer jail term; without the traffic charges, his drug sentences would have run consecutively to a longer total, so extra offending should not bring lighter consequences; and he offended while on the run from bail, when deterrence matters more. Saiful itself distinguished cases where the imprisonment offence came first.

The High Court dismissed the appeal against sentence. The imprisonment term is to commence at the end of the sentence for the first conviction, and the disqualification order from the date of the appellant's release from prison.