Indian national jailed in Singapore for biting off man’s finger during scuffle

Singapore : A drunk Indian national in Singapore was jailed for 10 months on Friday for biting off the front portion of a fellow Indian's index finger during a scuffle in April this year, a media report said.

Thangarasu Rengasamy, a 40-year-old excavator operator, pleaded guilty to voluntarily causing grievous hurt to Nagooran Balasubramanian, 50, an electrical engineering technician.

The two Indian nationals were living at separate foreign worker dormitories in Kaki Bukit, an industrial area in Bedok, at the time of the offence, The Straits Times reported, adding that the severed part of Nagooran's finger could not be found.

The court heard that just before the attack, Nagooran and another construction worker Ramamoorthy Anantharaj, were drinking alcohol at around 10 p.m. on April 22 when an intoxicated Thangarasu, who was seated some five meters away from the pair, started shouting.

When Ramamoorthy asked Thangarasu to keep his volume down, the latter marched towards him with his right hand raised. When Ramamoorthy responded by slapping Thangarasu, a scuffle broke out between the pair and Nagooran tried to separate them.

“In the midst of the struggle, (Nagooran’s) left index finger inadvertently entered the accused’s mouth. The accused... bit down onto the victim’s finger forcefully and did not let go," Deputy Public Prosecutor Cai Chenghan was cited as saying in The Straits Times.

“The accused and the victim then fell to the ground, with the accused still biting down on the victim’s finger,” Cai said, adding that Ramamoorthy tried to pull Thangarasu away, but the latter did not let go of the finger.

Nagooran, after he managed to free himself from Thangarasu, was rushed to Changi General Hospital where he was diagnosed with a partial amputation of the finger and was told that he needed surgery.

He was given 14 days of hospitalisation leave, the court was told. Deputy Public Prosecutor Cai asked for Thangarasu to be jailed for between 10 months and a year. “The victim will... likely be permanently inconvenienced, given the nature of his profession as an electrical engineering technician,” The Straits Times quoted Cai as saying. For voluntarily causing grievous hurt in Singapore, an offender can be jailed for up to 10 years and fined or caned.