Last year, 17-year-old ITE student Muhammad Zuhairie Adely Zulkifli was sentenced to serve 18 months in jail and receive six strokes of the cane for assaulting another student with a bread knife.
The incident came to nationwide attention in a viral video in March last year, where Zuhairie can be seen wielding a 35cm-long bread knife, chasing 18-year-old Ahmad Nurthaqif who apparently called his girlfriend “baby” days before the attack. The assault left Ahmad with slash wounds across his back, fractures on his forearm and fingers, as well as a cut behind his ear.
Yesterday however, Zuhairie succeeded in his appeal against his initial sentence, and was ordered instead to undergo a term of reformative training, Channel NewsAsia reports. The period of reformative training lasts between 18 months and 3 years.
His lawyer had argued that reformative training would help “reverse the impact” Zuhairie’s family background had on him — a home environment that consisted of inconsistent parental care and domestic violence. Furthermore, his parents were said to be “poor role models” with “long criminal records”.
Reformative training would “best serve the interests of society”, the lawyer said as rehabilitation would be better than sending him to jail where Zuhairie would be exposed to “negative influences of hardened criminals”.
Justice Chan Seng Onn told the teenager to make full use of his time in rehabilitation to improve himself.
