Two club bosses who told dancers to have sex with customers jailed and fined

A Bangladeshi woman came to Singapore under the premise that an agent had arranged a domestic worker job for her, but instead, she was told to work as a dancer in a club.* Two weeks after she began dancing, she was slapped for refusing to have sex with a friend of the club’s bosses. The following month, she and three other dancers at the club approached the authorities for help. Last year, the two men (Rajendran Nagarethinam, 60, and Arumaikannu Sasikumar, 46) who ran the club, Kollywood, were declared guilty of prostitution-related offenses. On August 25, the High Court acquitted Rajendran of one charge and reduced his sentence on two other charges. His sentence was cut from 30 months’ jail and a $3,000 fine to 19 months’ jail and a $2,500 fine. On the other hand, the court dismissed Sasikumar’s appeals and upheld his sentence of 16 months’ jail and a $1,000 fine. 

Other women who were employed as entertainers by Rajendran and Sasikumar at Kollywood included Ms. Atker Bithi, who arrived in Singapore in 2015, and Ms. Akter Tina, who arrived in Singapore in 2016. Both were in their mid-20s. Rajendran and Sasikumar asked the two women to provide sexual services to customers. Out of fear that Sasikumar would withhold her salary, Bithi reluctantly agreed to have sex with two customers. The $1000 that she was paid was given to Sasikumar. Tina refused to have sex with customers, and Rajendran slapped her and gripped her by the neck. On Feb 11, 2016, Bithi, Tina, and two other women who worked at Kollywood reported to the Ministry of Manpower that they had not been paid and were being sexually exploited. 

In Rajendran’s appeal, he argued that Tina was not recruited for sexual exploitation, and that there was no sexual exploitation since she refused his requests. He also argued that he did not hire Bithi for prostitution, either. The judge acquitted Rajendran of the procurement charge of Bithi as there was insufficient evidence to show that Rajendran was involved in the first instance of her prostitution. Rajendran’s sentence was cut from eight months’ jail and a $1,000 fine to four months’ jail and a $500 fine.

*Many, if not all, foreign workers come to Singapore through an agency. Such employment agencies aid foreign workers’ immigration process and job applications. Singapore has a large foreign worker population (exceeding 1 million, a big number for a city-state), and many female foreign workers hailing from all over South and Southeast Asia come to Singapore to work as live-in maids (‘domestic workers’).