Corpun file 23320

The Straits Times, Singapore, 31 May 2011

4 years' jail and caning for rioter

By Elena Chong

A "SETTLEMENT talk" between two rival gangs in West Coast Road over a dispute did not pan out the way it was supposed to.

The Gi Hai Khim gang had showed up for that April 2009 meeting seriously outnumbered, forcing its members to accede to the other side's demands.

The Gi Hai Khim gang then decided that an attack on the other side was in order to avenge the humiliation.

Nine of the gang members, led by Poovaindran Murugan, then 25, set upon a member of the other gang, who was at a bus stop with a friend. Of the nine, Poovaindran was armed with a pole while another member of his group had a spanner.

The attack on April 29 left Arifudien B. M. J. Abideen, then 17, so badly beaten up that he had to spend a week in hospital with head injuries.

His right eyeball was ruptured, and he is now blind in that eye.

Yesterday, Poovaindran was jailed four years and ordered to be given 12 strokes of the cane for rioting.

He was also handed down nine months for being part of an unlawful assembly. The two terms will run concurrently.

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The other eight members of his group have already been dealt with in court.

A gangland attack in Downtown East which took place more recently -- last October -- left a 19-year-old polytechnic student dead.

Eleven men have been charged with his murder.