When single mother B Lisa Christina was first sentenced to 30 days jail for defying the movement control order (MCO), she was already mentally prepared to serve out the full sentence as she believed that is the law, which is equal for everyone.
However, when Lisa (photo) began to talk to her 37 cellmates in the Kajang prison, she realised something was amiss.
"In the cell, there were 38 people, including me, and the others were all foreigners, Indonesian women. I was the only Malaysian in there.
"They were sentenced for (violating the) MCO and also for not having permits, but their sentences were lesser than mine... (they were sentenced to) 14 days. I was bullied (by them in jail).
"My sentence was the highest in the cell, that's why they were asking me, how come a Malaysian girl got 30 days jail sentence for only (violating the) MCO?
"People were laughing at me (inside the cell), they said I was a liar," a visibly nervous Lisa said in a press conference at Batu MP P Prabakaran's service centre today.
She did not know what to tell them as she also did not know what was going on, she said.
"I told them maybe something is wrong but they did not trust me. It was a bad experience in there," she said.
When asked to elaborate on her experience in jail, she said if she were to do so, she might start crying as it was very traumatic.
Lisa ended up spending eight days in jail before the High Court allowed her review application and replaced the jail sentence with a RM1,000 fine on April 29.
When she was released from jail, she became even more outraged and dissatisfied when she found out that Umno president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi's daughter and son-in-law were only sentenced to RM800 each for the same offence.
Lisa had earlier posted on Facebook about her dissatisfaction over the seeming double standards between her sentence and Nurulhidayah Ahmad Zahid and Saiful Nizam Mohd Yusoff's fines.
She said she did not mean anything by it, other than to express her anger at the moment, adding that she did not even know who Ahmad Zahid was before that.
"I was angry at the time, dissatisfied. A Datuk's daughter was only fined RM800 for a similar offence as mine. I got so angry.
"Because I had thought this is the law... which should be fair because the law is for everyone.
"I just said whatever I felt (in the Facebook post). It is from my heart. I am just hoping for one thing, for my justice. I want to know what went wrong," she said.
Lisa, who works in marketing and has a six-year-old son, also recounted what had happened the day she was first arrested on April 12.
She said she had gone to the shop downstairs at the flat where she was renting a room to buy some bottled drinks.
As she was leaving the shop, she spotted her housemate and colleague, an Indonesian man and approached him to give him one of the bottled drinks.
There were two other men nearby who knew her housemate and they also approached her. She said that was when they were detained by the police.
All four of them were made to squat together by some stairs and after she told the police what happened, Lisa said the police had told her they would only give her a warning but that she had to follow them to the police station regardless.
Lisa, who said she had never even been in a police station before that, agreed to follow them to the station but when they got there, she was suddenly told she would need to pay a fine of RM1,000. She was let out on police bail that night.
Later, she was informed she would need to show up at court on April 21, where the police, as well as her lawyer, had told her she would only need to pay the RM1,000 fine as long as she pleaded guilty.
However, after she pleaded guilty, the magistrate handed her a 30-day jail sentence instead.
"I was so shocked... I don't know what went wrong at the time. I don't know what happened then," she said.
Prabakaran had also said he would meet with her lawyers to discuss their next course of action in trying to seek justice for Lisa.
Lisa had originally been sentenced to 30 days’ jail by the Petaling Jaya Magistrate’s Court last April 21, after pleading guilty to a charge with gathering in an infected area with three others at a staircase area near a playground at SM1, Taman Subang Mas, Subang Jaya, at about 4.45 pm last April 12.
Their action is a breach of Regulation 11 (1) of the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases (Measures within the Infected Local Areas) Regulations 2020, which is enforced under MCO.
At that time, Lisa's lawyer Rajpal Singh had submitted that the jail sentence imposed on his client was manifestly excessive.
He said the magistrate had failed to consider that his client is a Malaysian, a first-time offender, with no previous record and not a serious criminal who often broke the law.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Nurulhidayah and her husband were given an RM800 fine each after pleading guilty to a charge of violating the MCO.
This came after Nurulhidayah had posted pictures of herself and her husband with Deputy Environment Minister Ahmad Masrizal Muhammad and Minister in the Prime Minister's Department in charge of religious affairs Zulkifli Mohamad Al-Bakri on her Instagram account on April 20. - Mkini
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