SINGAPORE: An Indian national in Singapore was sentenced to seven months in prison on Tuesday for kissing a 15-year-old girl and forcing her to perform a sex act on him, according to a media report.
Chellam Rajesh Kannan, 26, who met the girl, on Instagram, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a young person.
Another two charges, including wrongful restraint, were taken into consideration for sentencing.
The court heard that Chellam approached the girl, now aged 16, on Instagram sometime last year and sent a request to follow her account.
They began messaging each other on the platform with Chellam, who is married and has a young daughter, knowing she was a minor.
In August last year, they met in person for the first time and he bought her a packet of cigarettes.
She agreed to meet him again the next month at her housing and development block along Yishun Avenue 11, a suburb housing estate.
Three days before their second meeting, she asked Chellam if he could buy bottles of cider for her to share with her friends.
When they met at her block of flats on September 8, he passed her the bottles and asked her to follow him to a staircase landing.
There, she turned down his request for a kiss, but he persisted while reminding her that he had helped her to buy alcohol.
He forced her to perform a sex act on him.
In mitigation, Chellam said he felt "very remorseful and shameful" and had not committed any other offences in the past three years of working in Singapore.
He was previously a safety coordinator.
"I have gone through lots of suffering in this case. I lost my job, I miss my family, my wife and (two-year-old) daughter Mine is a love marriage and my wife is on her own," Chellam was quoted as saying by the TODAY newspaper.
District Judge Shawn Ho said that a stiff sentence was warranted as Chellam had exerted "pressure and coercion" on the victim.
The sentence was backdated to his date of remand, August 18 this year.
For sexual exploitation of a young person, he could have been fined up to USD 10,000 or jailed up to five years, or both.