Man jailed for entering SAF protected area, claimed he went to pick pandan leaves
Cheng Lee Meng (right) and his co-accused Ng Kiong Hoe. (Photo: TODAY/Nuria Ling)
Lydia Lam
30 Nov 2021 01:17PM
(Updated: 30 Nov 2021 01:17PM)
SINGAPORE: A man who entered a Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) protected area, purportedly to conduct prayers or pick pandan leaves, was jailed for two months on Tuesday (Nov 30).
Cheng Lee Meng, 62, pleaded guilty to one charge under the Infrastructure Protection Act of entering a protected area.
The court heard that a 2nd Warrant Officer with SAF was at Lim Chu Kang Road, Track 13 for a training operation at about 2.45pm on Sep 9, 2020 when he spotted Cheng driving a van up to a padlocked gate across from him.
Cheng's co-accused, 63-year-old Ng Kiong Hoe, alighted from the van and unlocked the gate, before Cheng drove into the Track 9 army training ground.
The training ground is a protected area, with two signboards put up stating in four languages: "Protected Area. No admittance to unauthorised persons".
The 2nd Warrant Officer rushed forward to detain the two men. He asked Ng what he was doing at the protected area, but Ng did not answer.
When he asked Cheng, Cheng initially said he was a contractor assigned to conduct works there. However, the witness felt this was suspicious as he had been specifically briefed that there would be no works at Track 9 that day.
Cheng next changed his account to claim that he had gone to Track 9 to conduct prayers. When the witness did not believe this either, Cheng changed his reasons to say he was there to pick pandan leaves.
The witness asked Cheng how he obtained the key to the gate, and Cheng said someone had passed it to him, but refused to say who it was. The witness called the police, and Cheng became hostile, raising his voice and gesturing at the witness.
The police soon arrived and arrested both Cheng and Ng.
Both men told investigators that they had gone to Track 9 to pick pandan leaves. Cheng had asked Ng to accompany him there that same morning.
Cheng claimed that he had been entrusted a set of keys by the SAF around the year 2000, when he operated a business at Ama Keng Dormitory. The keys were for him to open a gate near the dorm, leading to the SAF training ground.
When the dorm and the gate were both shuttered, Cheng tried using the keys on the newly constructed Track 9 gate and found that one of the keys worked.
However, further investigations showed that Cheng's account was false. SAF had constructed the Track 9 gate in 2019 and used a new padlock rather than an old one from 2000.
The police obtained a list of all contractors who had access to the key to the Track 9 gate and cross-checked this against all the contacts in Cheng's phone.
They found a Tan Kim Hua, a pest controller, to be the common point of contact. Cheng knew that Tan conducted pest control work at the training grounds and asked Tan to duplicate the key to the gate.
Tan agreed and duplicated the key. He also knew when SAF training exercises would be conducted at Track 9, as he would not be able to conduct pest control works on those dates.
Cheng would ask Tan for these dates, and had called Tan on Sep 9, 2020, to ask if there would be SAF training exercises at Track 9 that day. Tan claims he told Cheng not to enter regardless, as it is illegal to do so.
The prosecutor sought three to six months' jail for Cheng, noting the "great lengths" he went to to intrude into a protected military area.
Not only did he persuade Tan to duplicate the gate key for him, he also got Tan to divulge confidential and sensitive information on SAF's training schedule so he could enter the protected area undetected, said the prosecutor.
Cheng also actively misled investigators, giving inconsistent accounts as to why he intruded into the training ground and lying about how he obtained the gate key.
He also has a previous conviction for criminal trespass.
Cheng's lawyer said his client panicked when he was caught and obtained no real benefit other than to get "free" pandan leaves.
In response, the prosecutor said it was not known why Cheng could not have obtained pandan leaves from anywhere else such as from a market.
Ng had been fined S$2,000 in August for his role in the offence. The prosecutor said Ng's offence had been committed on the spur of the moment, as he was approached by Cheng and was not involved in the preparations.
For entering a protected area without authorisation, Cheng could have been jailed up to two years, fined up to S$20,000, or both.
Source: CNA/ll(zl)
