A 20-year-old Indonesian maid has been jailed for four years for injecting liquid soap into the feeding tube of a bedridden 85-year-old woman under her care, court officials said on Friday.
Dewi Supriyatin, who was sentenced on Thursday in a Singapore district court, committed the offence in February this year as she was unhappy and tired of looking after her employer’s mother-in-law who can only be fed through a tube.
She had been looking after Kok Chui Yee for four months, and when she could not contain her frustration anymore she decided to inject liquid soap into the old woman’s feeding tube, the court was told.
“She had intentionally fed soap to a vulnerable, bedridden 85-year-old woman for the trivial reason of wanting to leave her employment,” deputy public prosecutor Chew Chin Yee was quoted as saying by the newspaper on Friday.
“The victim was entirely under her power,” he said.
As a result of Dewi’s act, Kok suffered from fever and intestinal bleeding.
Dewi claimed in her defence she had been verbally and physically abused by her employers.
There are more than 140 000 domestic workers in Singapore, mainly from Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, and stories of employers abusing them and retaliatory acts by the domestic workers frequently make headlines. – AFP