SINGAPORE: A man who was caught in a viral video defecating at the entrance of The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands (MBS) was fined S$400 (US$308) by a court on Thursday (Sep 19).
When the construction worker asked the judge for a lower fine, the judge asked him: “Do you know how to get a low fine? Don’t do this in public.”
Indian national Ramu Chinnarasa, 37, pleaded guilty to one count of defecating in a public place under the Environmental Public Health (Public Cleansing) Regulations.
The court heard that Ramu, who was in Singapore on a work permit, drank three bottles of hard liquor on Oct 29 last year.
Heavily intoxicated, he entered the casino at MBS in the wee hours of the next day to gamble.
He left the casino at about 5.20am on Oct 30, 2023.
Still intoxicated, Ramu felt the urge to relieve himself but could not locate a toilet in his drunken state.
At 7.01am at the entrance of The Shoppes at MBS, next to a restaurant, Ramu took off his pants, squatted and defecated on the floor.
The location was accessible by the public and was not a place for “sanitary convenience”, the prosecutor said.
After finishing at 7.11am, Ramu walked out of MBS and left his faeces on the ground, without alerting anyone of his actions.
He then lay down on some stone benches outside MBS until 11am, as he felt giddy. Then, he returned to his dormitory in Kranji.
Later that afternoon, a member of the security team at MBS came across a video on Facebook showing a man defecating at his workplace.
He informed his supervisor about the incident, and the security team obtained the relevant closed-circuit television footage.
An MBS security supervisor lodged a police report about the case of public defecation.
Ramu left Singapore on Oct 31, 2023 and returned sometime later.
He was arrested in early June this year when he tried to enter the casino at MBS and was identified by security as an “undesirable guest”.
The prosecution sought a fine of S$400 to S$500.
In their written submissions, the prosecution said Ramu defecated in public for about 10 minutes, “which is a not insignificant amount of time”.
“If not for the fact that his offence was filmed by a member of public and subsequently discovered by the MBS security team, the offender’s faeces would be left in the open for an extended period of time, in a public shopping mall with heavy foot traffic,” said the prosecutor.
“The damage to public cleanliness is significant in the present case.”
District Judge Christopher Goh had granted Ramu a previous adjournment for him to raise funds to pay the fine.
Ramu was unrepresented. In mitigation, he said only that he was pleading for leniency for the lowest fine.
“Do you know how to get a low fine?” Judge Goh asked.
“No, your honour,” replied Ramu through an interpreter.
“Don’t do this in public. Better still, don’t get yourself so drunk that this happens,” said the judge.
Speaking to the interpreter, he said: “I want him to know that if this happens again, the fine will be higher than the fine today.”
If Ramu does not pay the fine, he will have to serve two days in jail.
For defecating in a public place, he could have been fined up to S$1,000. If he continued to offend after conviction, he could face an additional S$100 for each day or part thereof.
