Two travellers jailed for breaching SHN to chat and share snacks
A desire to chat and share snacks while serving stay-home notice (SHN) in a hotel here has earned two travellers a stay behind bars.
Bojanki Suresh Naidu, 37, and Bharati Tulshiram Choudhari, 48, were each sentenced to three weeks' jail yesterday for breaching their SHNs.
They had each pleaded guilty to a charge of exposing others to the risk of infection while having reason to suspect they may have been carriers of Covid-19.
Another charge of not wearing a mask was taken into consideration during Suresh's sentencing.
The Indian nationals had flown into Singapore on the same flight from India on March 14. Both are Singapore permanent residents and did not know each other prior to the flight. But they became acquainted as both their rooms were on the 16th storey of Oasia Hotel Novena.
They exchanged numbers after Suresh, a logistics lead with pharmaceutical company Novartis, dialled the number for Bharati's room. She was unemployed at the time.
They came up with a plan to meet at her room for Suresh to collect snacks from Bharati and to chat with each other.
At about 12.30am on March 20, Suresh left his room without wearing a mask and went to Bharati's room.
She opened the door for him, and they were in the room together till about 1am.
When Suresh went back to his room, he found himself locked out and went back to Bharati's room for another five minutes. He used his mobile phone to call the hotel staff, and a security officer let him back into his room at about 1.20am.
The officer asked Suresh how he came to be locked out, and Suresh lied by claiming that he had difficulties breathing and had left his room for fresh air.
When the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority investigated, the duo lied and attempted to portray their meeting as accidental.
But their story fell apart because of security camera footage of the hotel's corridor, which showed that they had both opened their doors at 12.30am.
Bharati said she has been living in Singapore for 11 years and that she has embarrassed her family. Suresh said he has been living in Singapore for more than a decade and had been a volunteer at a community club for seven years.
He added that he was not in a relationship with Bharati, and that she had only wanted to help him by giving him food.
He also said he has a wife and two children here to support.
Suresh is to surrender himself on Sept 6, while Bharati is to surrender herself on Aug 31. For breaching their SHNs and exposing others to the risk of infection, they could each have been jailed for up to six months and fined up to $10,000.
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