PORT OF SPAIN – A High Court judge has sentenced a 34-year-old Chinese national to five months in jail after she pleaded guilty to attempting to bribe a police officer earlier this year in a bid to save a relative whose immigration status was being challenged.
Lu Wuying, was arrested at a supermarket and was charged last week Friday, the same day a habeas corpus application had been filed by attorneys came up in the San Fernando High Court.
Her attorney had argued that his client had kept in custody for ten days and should either charge her or release her.
She subsequently appeared before a San Fernando magistrate and was remanded in custody to reappear in the Princes Town Court last Monday.
The court heard on Friday that on August 2, the police went to Jin Xin Supermarket in Princes Town, south of here where they saw a Chinese man and asked if he was in the country legally. The man walked to the cash register and spoke to Wuying.
The man told the police that Wuying would give them his passport. But when the police asked Wuying for the passport, she took the officers to an area where she pushed her hand into her pocket and placed TT$100 bills in the police officers hand.
“He papers no good, take the money, let he go, no one will go,” she is reported to have told the police.
Her attorney, Dane Halls urged the court not to impose a jail sentence on his client, arguing that her actions were not a premeditated act, but a spur of the moment action.
He said jailing Wuying, the mother of a 13-year-old boy would be a further burden on taxpayers. (CMC)
