PUTRAJAYA – A former Administration and Diplomatic officer was sentenced to a year in jail by the Court of Appeal for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old male student in the bathroom of a religious school’s hostel.
Mohd Zarul Afifi Mohd Zaki was ordered by a three-member bench led by justice Datuk Hadhariah Syed Ismail to serve his jail sentence from today.
The 36-year-old man has been on RM8,000 bail pending the disposal of his appeal today.
He lost his appeal to set aside his conviction but succeeded in getting the court to reduce his sentence from six years’ jail and two strokes of the cane to just a year in prison.
Justice Hadhariah, who sat with justices Datuk Azman Abdullah and Datuk Azmi Ariffin, said there was overwhelming evidence to support the high court’s decision to convict Zarul for the offence.
However, she said the court agreed with Zarul’s counsel M.M. Athimulan that the six-year imprisonment and two strokes of the cane were manifestly excessive since there was no force used or injuries inflicted on the victim.
On April 28, 2021, the sessions court acquitted and discharged Zarul on the charge of committing sexual physical assault by touching the wrists and stomach of the boy who was taking his bath at 3.10pm in the bathroom of the school’s hostel in Kuantan, Pahang, on March 23, 2019.
The high court, on January 18, 2022, allowed the prosecution’s appeal and convicted Zarul and sentenced him to six years in jail and two strokes of the cane. Zarul then appealed to the Court of Appeal.
In the appeal proceedings today, Athimulan asked the court to restore the sessions court’s decision as he said it had rightly acquitted his client as the incident happened spontaneously and not intentionally.
Deputy public prosecutor (DPP) Muhammad Azmi Mashud, who was assisted by DPP Aida Khairuleen Azli, argued that Zarul’s evidence that he did not realise he entered the school compound because he was playing the Pokemon Go game on his handphone was merely a bare denial.
He said Zarul’s testimony that he entered the bathroom to take off his clothes and accidentally touched the victim’s stomach was also a bare denial. – Bernama, July 4, 2023
