Ong J:

In a trial before Ismail Khan J, with the aid of assessors, the first three appellants were convicted under s. 3(1) of the Kidnapping Act, 1961, on a charge that they, in furtherance of a common intention to abduct one Ng Chee Theng, a boy of nine, for ransom of $50,000, did abduct this boy to a semijungle at the 4th mile Gemas-Tampin Road. The fourth appellant was convicted on a charge of abetting the others in the commission of the offence. They were all sentenced to imprisonment for life, which is mandatory as the only alternative to a sentence of death. They all appealed against both conviction and sentence, but the latter is, of course, not appealable. We dismissed the appeal of all the appellants and intimated that we would give our reasons later.

The facts were as follows. The boy is the son of a well-to-do merchant of Gemas. In the evening of 21 December 1963, he went out with an elder brother, twelve years old, for drinks at an ice-stall. The boys were well acquainted with the fourth appellant and he invited them to a treat of "bubohkachang". They were afterwards joined by another friend. As a pretext to remove the elder brother and friend, the fourth appellant asked them to go to a shop to get him a calendar. In their absence this appellant then lured the boy Chee Theng to a back lane where he was snatched and carried away blind-folded into a motor-car waiting there for this purpose. He was taken to a piece of secondary jungle some 200 to 300 yards off the Gemas-Tampin

Road at the fourth mile. For a day and two nights he remained there guarded by the second and third appellants. His blind-fold was removed on the following day, when he was able to see the faces of his two captors. That same day a third person who was masked arrived on the scene with provisions, and this man also interrogated the boy about his family and the telephone number of his house. On the night of his abduction, however, the boy had given his captors, as the telephone number of his house, that of a next-door neighbour instead. He was thus able to delay them in getting into touch with his father, and, in the event, such delay proved most valuable in leading to their capture. The number he gave was Gemas 273; his own actually was Gemas 271.

Around mid-night an anonymous caller telephoned to the neighbour that he was a Singaporean who had kidnapped the listener's son. The caller said that he would ring up again the following day. Chee Theng's father discovered on the following morning that his son was missing and he reported to the police. He had also heard from his neighbour about the telephone conversation. The police then arranged for incoming calls to Gemas 271 to be diverted to Tampin police station, in order that the source of any call by the kidnappers could promptly be traced.

At about 8.15 p.m. on 22 December 1963, a call for Gemas 271 was made from the telephone booth outside the General Hospital, Seremban. A Chinese police corporal (PW8) took the call, pretending to be the father of the boy, and he was told that the caller would release the boy for a ransom of $50,000 to be brought to a place along the Seremban-Tampin Road. At the same time that this call came in, Inspector Abdul Mutalib, who was then in Seremban, happened to be speaking over the telephone to Gemas. His conversation was interrupted and a message passed to him. As a result he dashed off immediately in his car to the Seremban Hospital and there apprehended the first appellant who was just coming out from the telephone booth.

After police interrogation the first appellant led the police party to the fourth mile, Gemas- Tampin Road. It was too dark then to search the jungle and action was postponed till dawn. When the area was combed the boy was found in the company of two men, one of whom was caught but the other managed to escape. The man detained was the second appellant. The other who escaped was the third appellant; he was arrested eight days later.