Over the seven years, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 45, an associate director of UBS, had ordered more than 20,000 tracts online from the American publisher, Chick Publications.

Before 2000, she had bought them from bookstores in Singapore.

On Tuesday, the court heard she had also mailed tracts to 20 of her Muslim colleagues over the past 20 years.

Asked by Deputy Public Prosecutor Anandan Bala if the purpose of her exercise was to convert her Muslim colleagues, she replied: 'I am sowing the gospel seed, but it is God that converts.'

She and her husband, SingTel technical officer Ong Kian Cheong, 50, are accused of distributing seditious and objectionable publications to three Muslims in Singapore between October and December 2007 as well as possessing 11 seditious titles of comic tracts at their Maplewoods condominium on Jan 30 last year.

The prosecution alleges that the comic style booklets, The Little Bride and Who is Allah?, mailed to two men, were seditious and had the tendency to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims in Singapore.

The Christian couple also allegedly distributed The Little Bride to Madam Farhati Ahmad earlier that year, which could have fanned feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between the two religious groups.

Under cross-examination, Chan denied that she did not hand the tracts out directly as she knew their contents could cause her problems. DPP Bala said: 'You don't want a direct confrontation between yourself and the recipient to turn ugly?'

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.