State v Sinha [2010] FJHC 587; HAC15.2009L (10 December 2010)

IN THE HIGH COURT OF FIJI
AT LAUTOKA
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CRIMINAL CASE NO. HAC 15 OF 2009L
(being a consolidation of HAC 80, 81 and 87 of 2008 and HAC 86 of 2010)

STATE

vs

SALENDRA SEN SINHA

Accused in Person
Mr. J. Singh for the State

Date of Hearing: 22, 23 & 24 November 2010
Date of Sentence: 10 December 2010

EXPLANATION OF SENTENCE

[1] Salendra Sen Sinha, I have today handed down the sentence for the sixty-one counts you have been convicted of and this short sentence is but by way of an explanation of that official sentence.

[2] The official sentence (of 54 pages and 25 paragraphs) is the definitive sentence and should you appeal to the Fiji court of Appeal (which you must do within 30 days) then that sentence will be the document you and the appeal Court will rely on, and not this explanatory document.

[3] You have pleaded guilty to and been convicted of sixty-one counts of forgery, obtaining by deception, larceny and obtaining money on forged documents. These offences all took place in a spree of crime undertaken by you and others in the middle of 2008.

[4] You held yourself out to be a representative of an Australian Mining Company and on the promise of jobs, you took money off 34 young men as a visa fee. They did not get a visa, nor did they get a firm job offer, and of course they did not get their money back. Most of them paid $555 for the visa fee, money they could ill afford but in a time of high unemployment in Fiji they were desperate. These offences were cynical, calculating and despicable. For each of those 34 offences you are sentenced to 2 years 6 months to be served concurrently with each other.

[5] Some of these men gave you their passports and in six cases you altered these passports by inserting photos of your friends instead of the original photos. This is forgery which you did and were convicted of six times. For these six passport forgeries you will also serve 2 years each concurrently.

[6] You stole eight FIRCA cheques from the Nadi Airport Post Office, and you then forged these cheques by changing the name of the payees on the cheques to the names on the passports you were holding. With the passport as an identity document, your friends whose photos were by now in the passport could then cash the cheques and get the money. For the theft of the FIRCA cheques you are sentenced to two years and for the passport forgeries and the cheque forgeries you are also sentenced to two years for each offence all to be served concurrently.

[7] A generous discount has been given to you to reflect your clear plea of guilty to all the charges.

[8] You are convicted of five counts of obtaining money on these forged cheques and you are sentenced on each of these counts to two years imprisonment to be served concurrently.
For the last count where you obtained for another, a large sum of FIRCA money on a forged instrument, you are sentenced to two years and eight months imprisonment.

[9] All sentences are to be served concurrently with each other, except for the six obtaining on a forged instrument counts (totaling 2 years and eight months) which will be served consecutively to the other sentences.

[10] This means that you will go to prison for a total term of five years and two months. As you are a serious repeat offender (but not in law a "habitual offender") and as you cynically extorted money from many impoverished jobseekers as well as the Fiji Government, I order that this sentence be served consecutive to any sentence presently being served by you.

[11] You will serve a minimum term of four years for these offences before being eligible for parole.

[12] Mr. Justice Goundar has already given you credit for time spent in custody (in HAC 46/08).

P.K. Madigan
Judge

At Lautoka
10 December 2010