Jail, cane for drug abuser whose car hit pedestrian during police chase

A man who led police on a high-speed chase through Toa Payoh was on Wednesday sentenced to more than nine years' jail for drug, traffic and other offences.

A female pedestrian was hit by the car Vaswani Richard Prakash drove in the incident on Feb 12, 2021.

She suffered multiple injuries, including a fracture to her left ankle.

Vaswani, 36, had on Sept 14 pleaded guilty to a range of offences including drug abuse, causing grievous hurt while driving in a dangerous manner and driving while under disqualification.

The court heard that at the time of the high-speed chase, Vaswani was serving a remission order, which was in force until Aug 18, 2021.

This was after his release from jail for an undisclosed offence on Oct 23, 2019. As part of the remission order, he was supposed to keep himself out of trouble.

Instead, he was arrested on June 8, 2020 and his urine samples were found to contain traces of methamphetamine.

The high-speed chase happened while he was out on bail after this incident. Police had noticed a black Volkswagen speeding along the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) at 11.55pm. Vaswani was at the wheel.

When he noticed the police car following him, he accelerated to around 120kmh.

He was driving without a licence and had illicit drugs inside the vehicle.

In a video recording of the chase, which was played in court, the Volkswagen could be seen weaving through traffic along the PIE and cutting across multiple lanes at high speeds.

The car eventually turned into Toa Payoh, driving through nine red lights within three minutes as it darted through traffic.

At a pedestrian crossing near Block 111 Lorong 1 Toa Payoh, Vaswani ran another red light, but the car struck the pedestrian. He continued driving, but soon lost control of the vehicle before it collided with a road divider.

Vaswani then fled and was arrested after a three-day manhunt.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Goh Qi Shuen told the court that Vaswani had taken the car from a friend without permission.

On Wednesday, Vaswani was sentenced to nine years, six months, 10 weeks and 182 days in jail.

He was fined $3,000, ordered to receive 12 strokes of the cane and disqualified from obtaining all classes of driving licences for eight years from his date of release.

Vaswani also has to spend another 228 days behind bars, which is half of his remaining remission period of 456 days.