SINGAPORE – A Malaysian woman who swopped two digits on her motorcycle licence plate to avoid Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges was sentenced to three weeks’ jail on May 10.

Over four months in 2019 and 2020, Deivanai Karunanithi, 28, committed 68 ERP-related offences and five illegal parking offences with the altered plate.

She is the first person to be convicted over the use of a foreign-registered vehicle affixed with false licence plates for purposes of evading detection of unlawful activity.  

Deivanai pleaded guilty to 14 charges of failing to ensure that the identification mark of a vehicle was correctly exhibited at the back of her vehicle.

She received a week’s jail sentence for each charge, with the court ordering three of the sentences to run consecutively.

Land Transport Authority (LTA) prosecutor Darren Toh said that one of its senior enforcement officers spotted a parked foreign-registered motorcycle in Bayfront Avenue at about 5pm on Feb 21, 2020.

The officer noted that the motorcycle displayed an identification mark of JTH1825 in the front, but JTH8125 in the rear, and found that only the first vehicle number was registered. The motorcycle was impounded for investigations. 

Mr Toh said investigations revealed that the registered owner of the vehicle was Deivanai, who was at that time a security officer holding a work permit.

She would enter Singapore with the correct identification mark on both the front and rear of the motorcycle, but after passing through the Singapore Custo...