Kartika spared caning, but only until after Ramadan

UPDATED

SUNGAI SIPUT, Aug 24 — The will-she-won’t-she guess game over Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno’s appointment with the cane continues with the latest pronouncement that the reprieve she received earlier today would be valid only be for the Ramadan period.

Now, she will still have to take six lashes for drinking beer as the Pahang religious authorities now promise that the punishment will be meted out after the fasting month.

The 32-year-old mother of two was earlier taken in a van from her Sungai Siput hometown to the Kajang Women's Prison for the punishment but she was brought back within 30 minutes after the Prison Department said there was a breakdown in communication and the sentence could not be carried out.

Pahang's Religious Affairs, Dakwah, Unity and NGOs Exco chairman Datuk Mohd Sahfri Abdul Aziz said the state religious department enforcement officers had issued a warrant of arrest for her to be sent to the Kajang Prison for the whipping.

“At the same time, they received a letter from the Attorney-General’s Chambers advising them to release Kartika temporarily as it was not advisable for her to undergo the punishment during the fasting month,” he said in Kuantan.

“The sentence remains. She will be caned after the fasting month. She has been released but only temporarily,” he added.
Kartika had earlier refused to leave the van that took her home as she wanted to know if it was a temporary reprieve.

“I will not come out without a black-and-white document explaining the status of what has happened. I am surprised and speechless,” Kartika told reporters.

And her father said the change of mind would ridicule Islam, which bans Muslims from consuming alcohol, Reuters reported.

“The warrant cannot be executed," Sharafuddin Zainal Ariffin, head of enforcement for Pahang's Islamic Affairs Department, told reporters after Kartika Sari returned to her house.

Both Kartika, a Malaysian who has two children and who had worked as a nurse in Singapore, and her father had called for the sentence to be carried out quickly and in public.

“We had already accepted the punishment,” Shukarnor Mutalib, told reporters.

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