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SINGAPORE – A former boss of the popular restaurant Zam Zam was granted bail on Tuesday (November 3) after he was charged again with threatening another employee of rival restaurant Victory Restaurant.
Zackeer Abbass Khan, 50, was already sentenced on May 11 to six years in prison and six strokes of the baton for his original offenses, but his conviction was pending appeal to the High Court on November 9.
For his new crimes, Zackeer was granted bail, but ordered not to be within a 1 km radius of Zam Zam and Victory Restaurant, and was electronically tagged for that purpose. Zam Zam and Victory Restaurant occupy adjacent units along North Bridge Road.
Zackeer, a Singaporean, had been involved in a lengthy trial in which he was accused of participating in a conspiracy to cause serious harm to the supervisor of the Victory restaurant, Liakath Ali Mohamed Ibrahim. The latter was slashed in the face by a secret society member hired by Zackeer’s old friend, Anwer Ambiya Kadir Maideen.
Under his new position, Zackeer is accused of criminally intimidating Victory’s staff, Amir Norman Halimby, and saying in Malay: “Why are you fighting Habeeb? If you fight again, I prick your eye. If you love your family, you work well. If you don’t see I’ll kill you. I’m not afraid if I kill you. Because I’m already in. If you fight again, in two days, you see that I kill you ”. He is said to have made the threat on October 24 around 7 p.m. at 719 North Bridge Road, an area near rival restaurants.
Around the same time, Zackeer allegedly swerved a Toyota Vellfire towards Amir before braking, forcing Amir to back up to avoid being hit. You are facing a charge of committing a reckless act to endanger your safety.
Zackeer was placed in pretrial detention three days after the alleged crimes, and the court met Tuesday to decide on Zackeer’s bail.
One of Zackeer’s two new attorneys, Richard Lim, said that Amir used to work for Zackeer but had abruptly returned to his home country after receiving his salary, only to return to Singapore to work at Victory Restaurant.
His other attorney, Lolita Andrew, requested her client’s bail, noting that he had served the conditions of his bail for five years from his original case until Oct. 24. Zackeer committed his original crime on August 26, 2015.
The lawyer said that Zackeer, who had sole custody of five children since 2012 and remarried in 2018, needed to be present to ensure some normalcy in his family life.
On the business front, Zackeer oversees 80 workers and needed to delegate roles and responsibilities to them, especially at a time when the company could be compromised due to the pandemic.
Zackeer also suffered from a medical condition and had collapsed during police investigations. She had previously undergone heart surgery, Andrew said.
In shedding some light on the charges, Andrew said that on the day of the crimes, Zackeer was on his way to pick up one of his sons and that his sons were in the car when Amir allegedly hit the road.
Zackeer had to jam the brake so as not to hurt Amir. The attorney added that her client will seek judgment on both charges.
His case will be mentioned again on November 9.
If convicted of committing a reckless act to endanger a person’s life, Zackeer can be jailed for up to six months or fined up to $ 2,500, or both. For the crime of criminal intimidation to cause death, a person can be imprisoned for up to seven years or up to 10 years, or fined, or both.
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