The High Court, however, maintained the seven strokes of rotan ordered by the sessions court.

Dissatisfied with the reduction in the custodial sentence, the prosecution has filed an appeal to the Court of Appeal.

The 48-year-old was unrepresented while deputy public prosecutor Fatin Farahiyah Nazri appeared for the prosecution.

In his petition of appeal, the accused said he was remorseful about the incident and promised it would not happen again.

He said he had apologised to his family and that the victim’s mother had forgiven him.

The man said he was a first offender and the incident has caused him mental stress and high blood pressure.

Judicial commissioner Mahazan Mat Taib, in her judgment released last week, said the prosecution submitted case laws where offenders committed similar crimes but more than once.

She said the law did not provide a minimum mandatory number of strokes and as such the court was given the discretion on this type of sentence.

Mahazan said the number of strokes imposed by the trial court on the accused served as a deterrent to would-be offenders.

“Based on the facts of the case and submission by the prosecution, the reduction in the jail term can be considered,” she said.

The man committed the offence between March 8 and 10 in 2016 at a rubber smallholding in Langkawi, Kedah.

He pleaded guilty before the sessions court two years ago.

Incest is punishable with imprisonment of not less than 10 years and not more than 30 years, and shall also be liable to whipping.

The facts of the case revealed that the victim’s mother and the accused were married on March 8, 2016.

The incident came to light after the victim narrated the event to her sister two months later.

She said she was raped by the man when she accompanied him to collect rubber scrap in the smallholding.

The victim remembered the incident as it happened soon after her mother married the man, but she did not reveal it as she was embarrassed and fearful.