4 PIOs jailed for staging robbery in Singapore

Four Indian-origin persons who staged a fake police raid to rob three Indian nationals of more than SGD 1.3 million in a major gang robbery incident here in 2012, were today jailed for up to 10-and-a-half years.
Music teacher Magesan Ramasamy, 36, Mohamed Faizal Ajmalhan, 32, who works in finance, Arunachalam Lakshmanan, 37, and Chinnaya Antony Samy, 38, will also be given the maximum 24 strokes of the cane, The Straits Times reported.
The four convicted were each jailed between 10 years and 10 years and six months after a 29-day trial of gang robbery at a lodging house at Dunlop Street in the Little India shopping precinct on September 10, 2012.

Magesan and Faizal had also faced three charges of posing as police officers. They forced their way into the rooms of three businessmen and demanded their passports that day.
Pretending to be cops, they restrained their victims with flexi-cuffs and ordered them to sit or kneel, before taking about SGD 1.27 million from them.
Arunachalam and Chinnaya, both Indian nationals and construction workers, kept a lookout in the street. The two men had provided the rest of the gang with information about the victims, whom they believed were involved in illegal money remittance.

A fifth member of the group, taxi driver and police reservist Mohammad Ansari Abdul Hussain, 35, provided the police uniforms and also posed as a cop.

He had pleaded guilty to gang robbery and impersonating a
public servant in 2013 and was sentenced to eight years' jail and 12 strokes of the cane.
Today, Arunachalam and Chinnaya admitted to two charges each of attempting to rob a 64-year-old employee of a moneychanger on September 5, 2012, and robbing Mohamed Eunos Mohammad Salleh, 66, of SGD 74,730 on August 13 the same year.
The pair committed the offences with Faizal and Ansari, who had these charges taken into consideration in sentencing.
Prosecutors Crystal Tan and Lim Yu Hui said the amount involved appeared to be the highest amount ever taken in a gang robbery case.

The offence was premeditated and carefully calculated.
By carrying out the brazen daylight robbery, the accused had abused the authority of the police force and potentially tarnished the reputation of the police force.
They said it was due to the quick action of the police that about SGD 899,320 of the money was recovered.
All four had their sentences backdated to September 14, 2012.