PUTRAJAYA: A 57-year-old man has to spend eight years behind bars after the Court of Appeal yesterday reinstated his conviction and sentence for sodomising a neighbour’s son, then seven years old.

The bench comprising Datuk Wira Mohd Ghazali Mohd Yusoff, Datuk Md Raus Sharif and Datuk Heliliah Mohd Yusof, ordered Chan Wai Heng to serve the term from yesterday.

Chan was sentenced to eight years in jail and 10 lashes of the whip by the Ipoh Sessions Court on March 25, 2003, after he was found guilty of committing the offence in the bathroom of a house in Ipoh between January and April 2002.

On appeal to the Ipoh High Court on Nov 15, 2006, he managed to have the conviction and sentence set aside on lack of evidence to support the boy’s testimony and contradictions between the testimonies of two child specialists and a doctor on the tear in the boy’s anus.

The prosecution then brought the case to the Court of Appeal.

Reading the court’s judgement on the boy’s competency as a witness, justice Heliliah said that there was no specific procedure to be observed by the trial judge in ascertaining the level of a child’s understanding with regard to the duty of speaking the truth though he may not understand the oath.

The Sessions Court judge had indeed directed his mind to the requirements of Section 133A of the Evidence Act 1950 before embarking on the process of permitting the prosecution to lead evidence on the acts that were committed on the boy by Chan, she said.

She said that even though the trial judge was satisfied that the boy did not understand the oath, he had posed certain questions to the boy and found that the boy possessed sufficient intelligence and understood the duty of speaking the truth.

Deputy public prosecutor Jamhirah Ali represented the prosecution while counsel Naran Sing acted for Chan. — Bernama