Indian-origin officer in Singapore jailed for seeking sexual favours from women

Singapore: An Indian-origin police official in Singapore has been sentenced to two years in jail after pleading guilty to four counts, including two for corruption in the form of seeking sexual favours from women under investigation.

Mahendran Selvarajoo, staff sergeant with the Singapore Police Force, pleaded guilty to the charges, including to the two other offences under the Computer Misuse Act for copying data - sexually explicit videos – on his own devices.

The Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau arrested Mahendran, 32, on May 1 last year for seeking sexual favours from women, who he was investigating for shop-theft and credit card frauds.

As investigating officer, Mahendran contacted a woman linked to a case involving shop theft and lied to her that her company had contacted the police about the investigation.

He told her that he would help her and sought sexual favours from her to which she complied, fearing she could lose her job.

Similarly, Mahendran exploited another woman for help in investigations and took explicit videos from her laptop under the guise of investigations, the TODAY newspaper reported.

Court documents stated that Mahendran's duties were to carry out commercial crime investigations that entailed interviewing witnesses, among other things.

Despite being told by his senior that one of the cases was no longer with him, Mahendran went to a woman's home to get her signatures on an amended police statement that had new paragraphs inserted to highlight factors in her favour.

Mahendran faced a jail term of up to five years or a fine of SGD 100,000 (USD 72,703) for each corruption charge.