Its executive director, Glorene A Das, said the social implications of such “a light sentence” should be taken into consideration.
“It is so apparent that we are cultivating a culture of ‘you commit a crime, then plead remorse – and walk free with impunity’,” she said in a statement.
The Court of Appeal today suspended the eight-year jail term on Rozita Mohd Ali for abusing her maid pending the disposal of her appeal in the High Court.
A three-man Court of Appeal bench, chaired by Ahmadi Asnawi, allowed Rozita’s application to stay the sentence due to exceptional circumstances.
The bench, however, ordered her to post RM25,000 bail in two sureties and impounded her passport. It also ordered her to report to the Damansara Utama police station once every two weeks.
Rozita filed the application saying that the Shah Alam High Court could not summarily revise her case when the public prosecutor had filed an appeal against the Sessions Court ruling.
Rozita, 44, had pleaded guilty on March 15 to voluntarily causing grievous hurt by dangerous weapons to her Indonesian maid, Suyanti Sutrinso.
Glorene said cases of abuse of domestic workers should be dealt with extra care as they were increasing in numbers and it was a social issue that should be given high importance.
“The only effective way to do away with serious violence towards any person is for perpetrators to be prosecuted and jailed for lengthy periods of time.
“That is precisely what we expect the judiciary to do but instead the courts seem to take a lenient view of perpetrators who commit crimes of violence, for this is not the first case,” she said.
Sessions Court judge Mohammed Mokhzani Mokhtar had initially released Rozita on a good behaviour bond for five years with a surety of RM20,000.
However, this sparked outrage among the public, with an online petition against the sentence attracting over 70,000 signatures.
On revision, judicial commissioner Tun Majid Tun Hamzah on March 29 ruled that the good behaviour bond imposed by the Sessions Court was incorrect.
Tun Majid said the lower court had wrongly considered the mitigating factor that Suyanti had withdrawn her police report during the trial.
Rozita has been in the Kajang Prison for the last two months since Tun Majid refused her a stay of execution of the sentence pending appeal.
A video of Suyanti, seriously injured and lying near a drain in a housing area in Mutiara Damansara, went viral in December 2016.
It was reported then that Rozita had allegedly used a kitchen knife, a clothes hanger, a steel mop and an umbrella to cause multiple injuries to Suyanti’s head, hands, legs and internal organs.