SINGAPORE: A man who was sentenced to four years’ jail and six strokes of the cane in 2025 for molesting a woman in the nursing room of a shopping mall has been acquitted following his appeal.
In overturning the conviction against Ankit Sharma on May 25, High Court Judge Christopher Tan said it was not safe to convict the appellant as there were several inconsistencies in the woman’s testimony.
He found her evidence, specifically regarding why she continued to stay with the man even though she was supposedly distressed by his sexually explicit questions, to be “problematic”.
There is a gag order in place against the disclosure of the woman’s identity.
Sharma was accused of molesting the woman on the night of March 1, 2023, in the nursing room in Changi City Point by kissing her on the lips and by grabbing her hand and forcing her to touch him.
The woman, who was then a recruiter at a recruitment firm, was meeting him for the first time to discuss a possible job opening.
The two went to a restaurant in the mall at about 6.30pm and had alcoholic drinks.
According to the woman, the conversation moved from professional topics to personal matters.
At about 8.45pm, she excused herself to go to the toilet as she was uncomfortable with the questions Sharma was asking about her boyfriend, she said.
She messaged her then boyfriend to check in with her at 9pm before she returned to the restaurant and ordered her fourth round of drinks.
The woman said Sharma began asking her sexual questions. At 9.25pm, she excused herself to go to the toilet a second time as she was highly distressed, she said.
She called a friend to pick her up from the mall. She also spoke to her boyfriend over the phone and asked him to come to the mall.
As she exited the toilet, she said, Sharma pulled her into the nursing room and molested her. When he began touching himself, she called her manager.
The woman said he stopped what he was doing and walked out after telling her to act as if nothing had happened.
At the urging of her manager, the woman called the police and Sharma was arrested at the scene.
Sharma gave a largely similar account, but maintained that the conversation was mutually enjoyable and that the incident was consensual.
He said it was the woman who started asking personal questions, and that she had propositioned him to go to a hotel, but he turned her down.
Sharma denied that he asked her intimate questions, and said she had insisted on kissing him in the nursing room.
He said the acts took place with her consent and that she had offered to touch him.
Sharma said the woman was angered when he told her after the acts that he did not want to kiss her because she had bad breath.
He contended that the woman made up the allegations against him because she was offended by his insensitive remark about her breath.
In his judgment, Justice Tan said there were issues in the woman’s testimony that went to the heart of her allegations.
“Viewing these in the round, I am not confident that it would be safe to convict the appellant,” he said.
Justice Tan noted that during the trial, the defence repeatedly pressed the woman on why she had not simply left the restaurant.
He said the woman’s failure to walk away should not be regarded as automatically undermining her credibility, but her explanation must still be scrutinised.
According to the woman, she had asked her boyfriend to check in on her so that she would have an excuse to leave.
Justice Tan said it was difficult to understand her explanation.
“If her intent was to find an excuse to politely take her leave, she could have simply done so with or without (the boyfriend) in the picture.”
He added that when the woman was pressed on this during cross-examination, she claimed that Sharma had stopped her from leaving – a detail not previously mentioned to the police or in her earlier testimony.
What troubled Justice Tan the most was the inconsistency that arose when the prosecution’s evidence was juxtaposed against the statement that the woman’s then boyfriend gave to the police, he said.
The man did not wish to be involved in the court case, but his statement was admitted as evidence.
The defence tried to subpoena him as a witness but could not reach him at the address provided.
The boyfriend had recounted in his police statement that the woman told him that Sharma “wanted to penetrate her”.
This was at odds with the testimony of the woman, who maintained that she never said such a thing.
Although she asserted that the boyfriend was lying, Justice Tan said the man’s account appeared to be consistent with the report of a triage nurse, which stated that the man had attempted to rape the woman.
The nurse was not called as a witness to explain how she took down the “chief complaint”, and the complainant was not asked about this aspect of what she presumably told the nurse. - The Straits Times/ANN
