By Elena Chong, Court Correspondent

A NIGHT of heavy drinking back in 2001 left a 27-year-old woman so drunk that she hailed a cab and promptly fell asleep in it, without stating her exact destination.

When she awoke the next morning, she found herself naked in bed in a Geylang hotel with her former colleague, with whom she had been drinking the night before.

A district court heard on Wednesday what happened in the intervening hours and closed the case by bundling the former colleague, Foo Chirk Leong, off for a seven-year jail term and six strokes of the cane for raping her on Dec 1, 2001.

He absconded to Malaysia after that and was arrested only last year.

He could have been jailed for up to 20 years and fined or caned.

Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.