A WOMAN, who could have been jailed up to 7 1/2 years if convicted of burning her maid with a hot iron, received only a police warning as the maid cannot be found to testify.

Former human resource assistant Teo Chua Suan, 39, was on Thurs given a discharge amounting to an acquittal by a district court.

The prosecution had told the court last week that it would not be able to contact the victim 'in the foreseeable future'.

Ms Teo was issued the warning on Dec 12.

On Thurs, her lawyer Anand Nalachandran told District Judge Jill Tan that a letter had been sent to the police stating that while Ms Teo acknowledged receipt of the warning, she is still maintaining her innocence.

She had consistently denied inflicting burns on the arms of Indonesian maid Dewi Raith, and hitting her with a wooden pole at her flat in Jurong West Street 42 in September 2006.

The court was not told why the case took more than two years to be heard or the whereabouts of Ms Dewi.

Ms Teo was charged on the two counts of maid abuse in June 2007. She then got pregnant and gave birth to her third child in June this year.

After the hearing on Thurs, she wept while telling The Straits Times: 'The ordeal has been so long but it's finally over. All I want to do is go home and breastfeed my baby.'

Asked why she accepted the police warning as she had all the time insisted that she was innocent, she said: 'I just wanted to get on with my life.'

Mr Nalachandran said that the prosecution in this case could either grant a discharge amounting to an acquittal, or a discharge not amounting to an acquittal.

While the former means the accused person cannot be brought to court to face the same charge, the latter means that the case could be reopened if new evidence surfaced.

Ms Teo said that the maid had worked for her only for four days before accusing her of the offences.

She had been told that Ms Dewi was a first-timer here, but later discovered that the 24-year-old had worked here previously and had been repatriated to Batam.

Ms Teo said that she had been subjected to a polygraph test, more commonly known as a lie detector test.

While its findings are inadmissible in court, law enforcement officers use it to assess the credibility of victims and suspects.

Lawyers said that warnings are usually issued for minor cases of fighting, causing hurt or being a public nuisance.

Warnings in maid abuse cases are rare and generally only issued when the victim or witnesses cannot be contacted, said senior lawyer Edmond Pereira.

Also, if the victim's testimony is weak, such as in the case of young or mentally disabled victims, he added.