HE FELL asleep in the back seat of a taxi that was taking him from Havelock Road to Pasir Ris Street 11 at about 4am on Feb 27, 2011.

At the destination, the cabby was unable to wake Ravichandran Manikam so called police for assistance.

Sergeant Benjamin Koh Jie Ming, 23, and Corporal Muhammad Amin Ismail, 21, managed to do so. But after alighting from the taxi, Ravichandran, 33, fell down.

The two officers helped him up but he then dropped his mobile phone. Cpl Muhammad Amin picked it up and was searching for the contact numbers of Ravichandran's family members to call when the logistics assistant said: "Let me do something", and punched Sgt Koh in the face.

A district court on Wednesday jailed him for a month. He was also fined $2,000 for threatening his ex-wife in contravention of a personal protection order she had taken against him.

On Nov 5, 2010, he came home and wanted to go into his wife's bedroom. She refused to unlock the door so he used a spare key to get in. In the subsequent argument, Ravichandran said: "What if you have a (Personal Protection Order) against me? Call the police now. It will take me less than a minute to trash you out."

She did call the police but Ravichandran did not carry out his threat.

Defence counsel Tang Gee Ni said that the couple is now divorced and that his client had been drunk when committing both offences. The court also heard that Ravichandran is receiving counselling for alcohol addiction at the Institute of Mental Health and is making good progress.