THE High Court has quashed a 13-month sentence with a non-parole period of three months imposed on a woman incarcerated for assaulting her de facto partner.
Farina Bi had pleaded guilty and was convicted on February 10 this year on a count of assault committed on January 30.
Court records show the victim had returned home after finishing his work for the day. While the victim was coming out of the washroom, Bi approached him and started touching him, but he rejected her advances, and she grabbed him by the hand, scratched his chest and back and punched his chest.
The victim became frightened and called his boss, who directed him to spend the night at a colleague’s home.
According to his medical report, he received multiple bruises on the biceps and a laceration on his left upper chest.
Bi, being dissatisfied with the Magistrate’s Court in Lautoka, filed an appeal against conviction and sentence on March 19.
One of her grounds was that the magistrate did not adequately explain to her the consequences of pleading guilty and its significance and that it would be a miscarriage of justice.
“The appellant had not shown how the guilty plea she entered was equivocal. Therefore, the grounds of appeal advanced by the appellant against her conviction have no merits and be dismissed,” stated High Court judge Justice Aruna Aluthge on June 3.
In terms of her grounds for sentence, she submitted that the sentence was harsh and excessive, which the judge in his analysis also agreed to. Justice Aluthge dismissed Bi’s appeal against conviction but partially allowed her appeal against sentence.
He substituted the sentence with a six-month imprisonment term from the date of the original sentence imposed on February 21, 2025.
