Police Constable Ramkhalawan. Remember this name, in case he happens to approach you once he’s completed his community service sentence.

This man got on a bus in Rose Hill on the 23rd May 2009 and sat next to an 11 year-old girl. He then forced the girl to touch his penis. The child, traumatized by this brute, stood up and started crying. Panicked, the coward tried to get off the bus. Other passengers reacted spontaneously and heroically by shouting at the driver not to let the policeman off the bus.

I presume they started questioning the kid and she told them what had happened and the passengers and driver alike expressed righteous anger and decided to drive straight to the police station to report the policeman.

Funny huh? Citizens doing what a policeman should do while the police officer acts like a despicable pervert.

Anyway, three years later, Magistrate Wendy Rangan of the Intermediate court chose to believe the girl’s version - the pervert turned out to be a coward and a liar since he pleaded not guilty- and sentenced the police constable. So far so good.

But hear this: Magistrate Rangan felt that the police constable should be sentenced to… eight months penal servitude. But she then felt that in this case, a social survey should be done by the probation service to see if the police constable could instead be sentenced to community service rather than be sent to prison.

Eight months. Community service. For an act like this. Fancy that.

The police constable - police sources tell us procedures have been initiated to dismiss the pervert- was prosecuted under section 14 (1) (a), (2) (b) of the Child Protection Act.

Section 14 (1) (a) provides that any person who “causes, incites or allows any child to be sexually abused by him or by another person, shall commit an offence”. Section 14 (2) (b) of the same act says that a child “shall be deemed to be sexually abused when he has taken part whether as a willing or unwilling participant or observer in any act which is sexual in nature for the purposes of any activity of pornographic, obscene or indecent nature”.

Section 18 of the same act says that any person who commits an offence under section 14 shall, on conviction, be liable to “penal servitude for a term not exceeding 10 years”. Eight months versus ten years.

I would have thought - but obviously I could be wrong I mean my only guide is common sense here- that when the “any person” provided for in that bill happens to be a police officer, the sentence should be all the more prohibitive because a person who does exactly the contrary of what he is supposed to do, should be made an example of. Instead, the PC gets off scot-free. What kind of a message does eight months community service send to perverts in uniform and perverts full-stop?

Will the DPP please appeal against this sentence?