Derek Achong

A 59-year-old gar­den­er of Pe­nal, serv­ing a 14-year prison sen­tence for com­mit­ting sex­u­al acts on a 10-year-old girl on four oc­ca­sions over a decade ago, has lost his ap­peal against his con­vic­tion. 

De­liv­er­ing a 28-page judg­ment dur­ing a vir­tu­al hear­ing, yes­ter­day, Ap­pel­late Judges Al­ice Yorke-Soo Hon, Maria Wil­son, and Mal­colm Holdip dis­missed all three grounds of ap­peal raised by at­tor­neys for Kishore Lutch­man, of Pe­nal Rock Road, Pe­nal. 

In its de­ci­sion, the ap­peal pan­el re­ject­ed claims that the judge, who presided over Lutch­man’s tri­al, made er­rors in ex­plain­ing to the ju­ry, which even­tu­al­ly con­vict­ed him, how the vic­tim’s ev­i­dence should be con­sid­ered. 

In dis­miss­ing the ap­peal, the pan­el af­firmed Lutch­man’s con­vic­tion and sen­tence. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Lutch­man was charged with two counts of se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy and two counts of griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault, aris­ing out of a se­ries of spo­radic at­tacks on the child be­tween 2007 and 2009. 

The pros­e­cu­tion’s case was that in Sep­tem­ber 2007 the ac­cused com­mit­ted the first act of se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy on the child at a house. How­ev­er, he was in­ter­rupt­ed by a neigh­bour and her moth­er who ar­rived around the same time.

The child was threat­ened by the ac­cused not to say any­thing.

On an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, lat­er that month, Lutch­man al­leged­ly made the child put on a porno­graph­ic DVD for them to watch.

The child left and when she re­turned the ac­cused had his pants al­leged­ly pulled down to his knees and he was play­ing with him­self. The third of­fence took place in a car in De­cem­ber 2007. 

The child re­port­ed the at­tacks to her moth­er and then the po­lice af­ter the fi­nal in­ci­dent in Jan­u­ary 2008 when the ac­cused al­leged­ly went in­to her bed­room and sex­u­al­ly at­tacked her. 

Lutch­man was sen­tenced to 14 years in prison for each griev­ous sex­u­al as­sault charge and five years for each se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy charge.

Lutch­man will be re­leased af­ter serv­ing 14 years as the sen­tences were or­dered to run con­cur­rent­ly. 

Lutch­man was rep­re­sent­ed by Daniel Khan, Ula Nathai-Lutch­man (no re­la­tion), Har­ry­nar­ine Singh and Davina In­als­ingh. Sab­ri­na Dougdeen-Jaglal rep­re­sent­ed the Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) in Lutch­man’s tri­al and in the ap­peal.