Court orders stalker to be admitted to Hospital Bahagia

SHAH ALAM: Mohamad Safiq Rosli who was charged under Section 507A (1) of the Penal Code for criminal stalking, has been ordered to be sent to the Hospital Bahagia Ulu Kinta in Perak.

Magistrate Sasha Diana Sabtu said the court found the 38-year-old man, the first individual to be charged for the offence under the newly crafted law, was of unsound mind and did not realise that his actions were against the law when he committed the offences.

The defence, she said, had successfully invoked that the accused was of unsound mind under Section 84 of the Penal Code.

"Therefore, he is acquitted and discharged. He is to be placed in a safe place and detained at the pleasure of the Sultan of Selangor under Section 348 of the Criminal Procedure Code," she said on Wednesday (Jan 17) after hearing submissions from the prosecution and defence in a one-day trial.

Earlier, the defence’s witness consultant forensic psychiatrist Dr Ian Lloyd Anthony said that Mohamad Safiq had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

"His mental disorder at the time of the alleged offences was predominantly delusional in nature.

"He had multiple delusions, the main delusion being delusion of love, also known as erotomania, a person experiencing this type of delusion believes that somebody else is in love with him," he said from the witness stand.

Victim Acacia Mardiana Daud also had her impact statement read by her lawyer, Wee, before the verdict was delivered.

In the statement, Acacia said she was terrorised and harassed by the same Mohamad Safiq for eight years, which has impacted her mental health and social life.

“He has made over 30 social media accounts to harass me even though I tried blocking him and ignoring him and asked him to stop.

“He has made his intentions clear that he needs to find me, that he needs me.

“He has spoken about wanting to taste my soul. He had wasted 8 years of his life to disturb my life,” she said.