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Man jailed 5 days for punching, slapping primary school boy who rode bicycle on pathway: Report – ChannelNewsAsia (2 September 2021)

TLDR: A 67-year old man was jailed for punching a primary school boy.

He had repeatedly confronted the boy for cycling on a pathway. While the boy was explaining that cycling was in fact allowed on that particular pathway, the man slapped and punched him. The boy did not retaliate.

More thoughts: The punishment for voluntarily causing hurt is section 323 of the Penal Code. Generally an offender could get up to 3 years’ jail or up to $5,000 fine, or both.

However, section 74B of the Penal Code allows the court to sentence an offender to twice the maximum punishment if the victim is below 14 years old.

This is one attempt that the law has made to instil greater protections for young victims.

However, the court on the other hand also considered factors such as the offender’s plea of guilt and lack of past convictions in ultimately passing a lower sentence.