One man’s stalker behavior across two years was so traumatizing that he caused his victim to quit her job just to avoid him. She’ll have an easier time avoiding him now. He was sentenced to a 12-month jail term yesterday after admitting to four of six charges: unlawful stalking, breaching personal protection, causing hurt, and transmitting a false message.
R. Murliy already had a list of convictions that dated back to 1995, most of which he had committed while drunk, the court heard. The 51-year-old apparently began harassing the 43-year-old female, whose office was near his home in Dover Road, in June 2014, The Straits Times reported.
Some of his antics included cat-calling her as she walked by a void deck on Jan. 23, 2015.
After months of enduring his awful behavior, the woman threatened to lodge a police report if he would not stop his harassment. Needless to say, he didn’t listen.
Later that year, on Oct. 27, Murliy approached her table at a coffee shop — where she was seated with her teenage daughter — and spoke loudly in Tamil while gesturing at her. Both ladies ignored him, so he plopped himself down at a nearby table to sit and simply stare at his victim.
ST noted that he had also been to her office to ask about her. In Jan. 2016, he appeared near her table while she was having breakfast with her colleagues and called her “Aishwarya Rai,” the name of an Indian model/actress.
A couple days later, when he spotted her wearing shorts near her office, he told her that he did not appreciate seeing Indian women wearing that particular item of clothing.
In addition, Murliy harassed her multiple times between Jan. and April 2016, talking loudly and spewing vulgarities in the hallway outside her office to draw her attention.
On Feb. 2 that year, he repeated that behavior five times in a single day, leading her to call police, ST said.
After living in this constant state of unease for two years, the victim was left shaken and traumatized. Paranoid about bumping into Murliy, she began taking different routes to work until she eventually left her job to escape from all the stress and anxiety he was causing her.
As for Murliy, his other cases included “whacking” a 13-year-old boy while drunk, punching his 71-year-old mother in the face and head while she was watching television at home — breaching her personal protection order against him for the eighth time — and making a nuisance 999 call to falsely report a murder on his block.
Murliy’s lawyer said he was remorseful and told the court he would not re-offend.
His sentence was backdated to Sept. 6, when he was first incarcerated.
