A boarding school religious teacher has been sentenced to six years in prison and four strokes of the rotan by the Seremban sessions court on 12 counts of sexual assault against seven students.
Khairi Fitri Baharom, 38, who is also a warden of the school, pleaded guilty to all the charges before judge Surita Budin today.
Surita ordered the prison sentence to run from the date of his arrest on May 25.
She also ordered the accused to undergo counselling and be placed under police supervision for one year upon his release.
All 12 offences were said to have been committed at the boarding school, located in Jempol, and at a house in Kuala Pilah, between March 2024 and January 2025.
On six of the charges, Khairi is accused of committing carnal intercourse against the order of nature without consent against five of the students, who were aged nine to 12-years-old at the time.
On the remaining six charges, he was accused of sexually assaulting six of the students, aged nine to 12-years-old at the time.
Earlier, defence counsel Ahmad Loqman Hakim Ahmad Khairie, in seeking a lenient sentence for his client, told the court that Khairie was unmarried and was the sole caretaker of his ailing mother.
Deputy public prosecutors Norazihah Asmuni and Nurul Balkis Zunaidi urged the court to impose a proportionate sentence, given the seriousness of the offence.
They argued that the accused, who was entrusted with the role of teacher and warden, should have protected his students, but took advantage of his position to commit a vile crime instead.
