CORRECTION NOTICE:
An earlier article (dated 19 April 2023) contains a false statement of fact.

Tangaraju s/o Suppiah was not denied an interpreter during the recording of his statement. After Tangaraju’s trial for drug trafficking in the High Court, the Judge had made a determination on this issue in the judgment, and rejected the claim that he had asked for an interpreter and was denied one.

For the correct facts, click here: https://www.gov.sg/article/factually190523

I received POFMA orders from the government at around 7pm on 19 May 2023, demanding that I comply within 14 hours (by 9am on 20 May). I am legally obliged to post the above correction notice and leave it at the top of WTC's main page until 15 June 2023, 11.59pm (GMT+8).

This is what I know:

1. Tangaraju said he could speak some English, but preferred speaking Tamil. He did not have an interpreter when his first statement was recorded.
2. During his trial, Tangaraju claimed that he had asked for a Tamil interpreter when the police were recording his first statement, but his request was denied. He said that, because of this, he had trouble understanding some of the questions the police officer asked, and parts of his recorded statement when it was read back to him.
3. This is what the High Court judge said in his grounds of decision (which you can find at https://www.elitigation.sg/gd/s/2018_SGHC_279): “The accused also alleged that his repeated requests for the assistance of an interpreter during the recording of his 24 April 2014 statement had been denied. As a result, he did not fully understand Insp Ng’s questions, nor the recorded statement when it was read back to him. Again, this was a bare allegation raised for the first time during his cross-examination, which I found rather disingenuous given the accused’s admission that he had made no such request for any of the other statements subsequently recorded from him.”

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