A police officer was sentenced to a total of 16 months' jail and three strokes of the cane on Thursday for molesting a drunk woman and computer misuse. Kevin Wu Zhenhao, 30, a sergeant, had pleaded guilty to grabbing the 26-year-old woman and touching her private parts at a lift landing of a Housing Block flat on Jan 14 last year.

He had also admitted to two counts of unlawfully accessing the police computer system to make searches about the outrage of modesty case on Jan 15 and Feb 24.

A closed-circuit television footage of the molestation was played in court earlier on Jan 10 when he admitted his guilt. The court also heard that the woman, who was drunk, staggered while walking to her boyfriend's block of flats at around 4am on Jan 14.

As she was squatting down and vomiting at the void deck, she felt someone pat her shoulder and saw Wu standing behind her. Wu asked if she was all right but she ignored him. He followed her into the lift and asked which floor she was going. He lied that he was staying on the tenth floor. As she was exiting the lift, he grabbed her from behind. During a struggle when both fell to the ground, he fell on top of her and molested her.

She shouted for help and he quickly fled towards the staircase. She crawled to her boyfriend's unit and called him using her cellphone. Her boyfriend came out and called the police after failing to catch Wu.

Police were investigating into the molestation case when they found out that Wu had used the Frontline Officers' Computerised System (Focus) without authority to conduct searches for information relating to his case.

Wu, who had seven other computer misuse offences taken into consideration, had his sentence deferred until Feb 13.