Woman who asked cop for information about ex-husband’s case avoids jail time on appeal
Selina Lum
The Straits Times
April 27, 2026
A woman who was originally given one week’s jail for receiving information from a police officer about a theft case involving her former husband has avoided prison time after succeeding in her appeal.
The 38-year-old Vietnamese woman, Tran Thi Tien, was instead handed a $1,500 fine by the High Court.
The Singapore permanent resident had appealed against the jail term imposed by a district judge in July 2025 over a charge of unauthorised receipt of information under the Official Secrets Act (OSA).
Tien had wanted to pass the information to her divorce lawyer, though she ultimately did not use it in the divorce proceedings.
In written grounds of decision released on April 10, Justice Mavis Chionh said a jail term was not warranted in this case.
The judge said the amount of information disclosed was limited. Only the number of the police report that was made against her ex-husband was disclosed to Tien, and this number contained no details of the contents of the report.
Justice Chionh added that Tien did not use the report number to cause any harm; neither did she disclose the number to anyone else.
She noted that there was only a single, simple request made by Tien.
She disagreed with the district judge’s characterisation of Tien’s conduct as having been “laced with malice” because she had made a “calculated effort” to extract information that she could weaponise against her ex-husband.
Justice Chionh said motive should be considered as a sentencing factor only in exceptional situations.
She reasoned that recipients of confidential information would have been motivated by some perceived personal benefit.
“It will not be feasible or productive in most cases to seek to rank different motives on some putative sliding scale of distastefulness,” she said.
The case involved Chan Zhiyao, who was then a senior investigation officer attached to the Special Victims Unit of Bedok Police Division.
In 2020, Chan was assigned to investigate a case of child abuse involving Tien and her then husband.
On Dec 9, 2020, Tien told Chan that her husband had stolen a mobile phone in 2016, and asked him to provide her with information on the investigations so that she could relay the information to her divorce lawyer.
Chan then conducted an unauthorised screening for Tien’s husband in a police database.
He obtained the police report number for the theft case, which he then sent to Tien over WhatsApp.
Tien and Chan later entered into a sexual relationship in May 2022.
The OSA offences came to light during an investigation into Chan over unrelated matters.
In her written grounds, Justice Chionh set out the sentencing approach for future cases of unauthorised receipt of confidential information, which carries a maximum $2,000 fine, a jail term of up to two years, or both.
She identified a list of factors to determine the level of harm caused and the level of the offender’s culpability.
They include the nature of information disclosed, the extent of actual harm caused, the offender’s role, and the duration of offending behaviour.
The number of factors in each case would determine the indicative sentencing range.
A case involving slight harm and low culpability would attract a fine or a short jail term, while a case involving high culpability and severe harm would attract a jail term from 1½ to two years.
The final sentence would be adjusted based on factors specific to each offender.
For the current case, Justice Chionh noted that both the prosecution and the defence had agreed that Tien’s offence involved slight harm and low culpability.
The woman, who was represented by Mr Chooi Jing Yen, sought a $1,500 fine, while the prosecution asked for the one-week jail term to be upheld.
Chan, then 44, was sentenced to a year and four months’ jail in April 2025. He had pleaded guilty to a charge under the OSA over disclosing information to Tien and an unrelated charge of criminal breach of trust.
Justice Chionh noted that the district judge who sentenced Tien had considered the issue of parity.
She disagreed that this was a case where the public would perceive that Chan had suffered injustice because he was given two months’ jail for the OSA charge when Tien was given a fine.
Justice Chionh pointed out that Chan had another charge under the Computer Misuse Act that was taken into consideration, had taken the initiative to access the police database, and had abused his position.
There was no doubt that the custodial threshold had been crossed, she said.
See something interesting? Contribute your story to us.
