Key points on Day 5: Ex-WP cadre thought Khan was naive

The defence concluded its cross-examination of former Workers' Party (WP) cadre Loh Pei Ying on Oct 18, the fifth day of the trial of WP chief and Leader of the Opposition Pritam Singh, and started hearing the prosecution lead evidence from another cadre, Mr Yudhishthra Nathan.

- Wong Pei Ting Correspondent and Wong Shiying

The court left off on Oct 17 after Ms Loh admitted to having lied about the reason for her redaction of a text message in a document submitted to the Committee of Privileges (COP).

Singh is fighting two charges over his alleged lies to a parliamentary committee convened in November 2021 to investigate Ms Raeesah Khan’s untruth in Parliament.

Ms Khan had, on Aug 3, 2021, told Parliament about how she had accompanied a sexual assault victim to a police station, where the victim was treated insensitively. She repeated the claim before the House on Oct 4, before admitting to her lie on Nov 1, 2021.

Here are five key points that came up when Ms Loh and Mr Nathan, who both assisted Ms Khan with her duties as MP, testified:

1. Loh had ‘90%’ intention for Khan to tell the truth

When testifying before the COP in 2021, Ms Loh had said there was on Oct 12, 2021, a consensus among Singh, Mr Nathan and her to tell the truth.

Referring to text messages admitted to court for the trial, Singh’s lawyer Andre Jumabhoy sought to show that Ms Loh and Mr Nathan had wanted Ms Khan to continue lying.

One of the messages read to the court showed that on Oct 7, 2021 – when police sent an e-mail requesting to interview Ms Khan – Ms Loh had suggested that the ground they should probably take was to say Ms Khan was not in contact with the victim and hence could not reveal the information for confidentiality reasons.

“You might want to gather some cases of people who shared their stories with you and present that instead,” she also said in the text message.

The court also heard Mr Nathan’s position was that revealing the truth to Parliament and Singapore would be “extremely damaging”, thus he suggested that Ms Khan continue to lie by misdirecting the police query.