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By Dorcas Ting
KUCHING, July 4: An engineer was fined RM25,000 or 15 months’ imprisonment by the Sessions Court here today after pleading guilty to sending offensive messages using the Short Message Service (SMS) that contained racial and sexual content to a staff member of a telecommunications company.
Sim Ngee Thiam, 45, pleaded guilty to five charges read out by an interpreter before Sessions Court Judge Afidah Abdul Rahman.
He was accused of intentionally creating and transmitting offensive messages with the intention of causing harm to others through the SMS service five times in separate instances around June, July, and December 2019.
It is understood that the racially and sexually explicit messages were sent to an officer at a telecommunications company in Malaysia.
All five charges were made under Section 233(1)(a) of the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 and are punishable under Section 233(3) of the same Act.
This section carries a maximum fine of RM50,000 or imprisonment for up to one year, or both, with a possible additional fine of RM1,000 for each day the offense continues after conviction.
Judge Afidah imposed a fine of RM5,000 or three months’ imprisonment for each charge.
The prosecution was led by Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) officers Siti Hajar Sulaiman and Nur Hazhzilah Mohammad Hashim, while the accused was represented by counsel Hii Yiik Yew. — DayakDaily
