In a series of events, a woman yesterday took a tight turn from denying to pleading guilty mid trial on a charge of disseminating a false statement likely to cause alarm.
Hajah Faizah binti Haji Abdul Gapar had claimed trial, and challenged the ingredients of the charge.
Defence Counsel Pengiran Shahyzul bin Pengiran Abdul Rahman on Saturday contested that mens rea required proof that the disseminated statement is false and likely to cause alarm.
Chief Magistrate Pengiran Hajah Norismayanti binti Pengiran Haji Ismail rejected the defence argument, that the knowledge of the falsehood is required.
The court invited the defendant to enter her defence.
The defence party requested for the court to affirm its ruling to the High Court.
The court fixed yesterday to make its ruling.
However, Hajah Faizah pleaded guilty to the charge.
DPP Raihan Nabilah binti Ahmad Ghazali’s charge states that the defendant made a false statement, by making a video recording with a caption purporting that four employees at a restaurant in the village where the defendant lives, were discovered by police officers to have violated their quarantine orders by attending work while their BruHealth was ‘Code Red’, likely to cause alarm, at 6.58pm on August 31, 2021.
The prosecution further revealed that the restaurant manager filed a police report regarding the false video statement that had gone viral on the day itself.
Police investigations first confirmed that the message was indeed false.
Police traced the video down to the defendant.
Investigations uncovered that she received a message from her aunt, conveying the false statement and told the defendant to report it.
The defendant then took to the restaurant, snapping photos of the ongoing police scrutiny.
The defendant sent photos to her aunt, saying that so far four of the restaurant’s employees had been found working with ‘Code Red’.
The defendant also admitted that she sent the same video with captions to another fellow resident in the neighbourhood, fearing for her own and neighbours’ safety as they frequent the restaurant.
The Chief Magistrate accepted the defendant’s guilty plea and admission to the facts of the case.
The court fixed today to hear mitigations from the defendant.
Hajah Faizah faces a penalties of a BND3,000 fine and three years’ imprisonment. – Fadley Faisal
