Court of Appeal publishes full written reasons for acquitting ex-Wah!Banana actor Lev Panfilov of rape

The Court of Appeal has published the full reasons for acquitting former Wah!Banana actor Lev Panfilov of his charges of raping and sexually assaulting a woman he met on Tinder.

The 30-year-old Russian national was previously sentenced to 11 years and six months in jail, as well as 12 strokes of the cane on May 19, 2025.

The trial judge had previously convicted Panfilov after finding the woman an "unusually convincing" witness and Panfilov not a "credible witness".

In "he said, she said" cases, an "unusually convincing" standard sets the threshold for a complainant's testimony to be preferred over an accused's evidence.

Panfilov later appealed and was acquitted of all charges on Sep. 2.

According to the written grounds published on Nov. 5, the court, comprising Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon, Justice Ang Cheng Hock and Justice Sushil Nair, ruled that the judge had erred in finding the woman's evidence "unusually convincing".

The written reasons also noted that the defence did not find any internal consistencies with the complainant's testimony, so there was no reason to overturn the judge's finding that the testimony was internally consistent.

However:

"Having reviewed the evidence, the Court was of the view that a number of external inconsistencies arose in the course of the complainant’s testimony.

These inconsistencies, when viewed in isolation, might not have stood in the way of the complainant’s testimony meeting the “unusually convincing” standard.

However, when taken collectively, they gave rise to a reasonable doubt in the Prosecution’s case.

In addition, a consideration of the physical evidence relating to this case, against the findings reached by the learned Judge in coming to the conclusions he did, raised a number of unresolved questions."

Inconsistencies

1. Screaming

The woman told a doctor on Jan. 18, 2021 that she had screamed during the alleged assault and stopped only because Panfilov forcefully prevented her from doing so.

In court, however, her testimony implied she had chosen not to scream, partly out of fear.

The court rejected the prosecution's description of this as a "minor inconsistency", saying the change suggested she "may have embellished the facts".

"When faced with two different possibilities, neither of which was more plausible than the other, it was only right for this court to resolve such a conflict in favour of the accused," it said.

2. Blood-stained underwear

The woman said she noticed blood on her underwear when she got home after the alleged incident, and testified that it was due to the alleged assault.

However, she retrieved the underwear from her laundry basket six days after the alleged incident to bring it to the police station to make a report, and agreed that she accumulated clothes for two to three weeks.

It was also undisputed that she had her period on Jan. 14, 2021, within the six days between the alleged incident on Jan. 12 and Jan. 18, 2021.

The court said this made it plausible that the basket contained clothes worn while she was menstruating, and there was no evidence the blood was not menstrual blood.

Moreover, Panfilov’s description of the underwear she wore that night also differed materially from the photograph of the blood-stained underwear in evidence.

"These inconsistencies and unresolved questions pertaining to the blood-stained underwear were material because they struck at the very heart of the prosecution’s case," the court said, noting that the underwear was the only physical evidence of the alleged sexual assault.

3. Memo

About four days after the alleged assault, the woman asked a doctor for a memo stating she had vaginal injuries and had been raped.

According to the doctor, the woman wanted to potentially approach Panfilov’s family with it and tell them what happened.

The court found it hard to accept that she could not recall asking for the memo, which was the very purpose of her visit.

The doctor also said that after the consultation, the woman asked to cancel the consultation record, which she omitted from her account.

These inconsistencies "lent some credence to the defence’s case that the complainant wanted to obtain a memo to confront Panfilov’s family and, when she failed to do so, wanted to erase evidence of the consultation from the clinic records," the court said.

4. Initial hesitance to make a police report

The court also found it "puzzling" that the woman initially hesitated to make a police report when she knew of the underwear, which she said was physical evidence of the alleged assault.

She later also testified that seeing the underwear had caused her to break down in tears after the alleged incident.

"It was therefore somewhat difficult to understand how the complainant could have completely forgotten about the existence of the very thing that had caused her to break down just barely three to four days later," the court said.

This therefore also cast doubt on whether it was the underwear she wore that night.

Other inconsistencies

The court said there was a gap in time during the alleged incident when Panfilov put on a condom, during which the woman did not perceive him doing anything to her.

This sat at odds with her account that she had tried to escape at least twice before being pushed onto the bed.

It was also questionable that Panfilov would go to the bathroom and struggle with the condom before resuming an attack, given her earlier attempts to leave

Objectively, the court said, the gap was "more consistent with the sexual encounter being consensual".

The court stressed that victims of sexual crimes cannot be "straitjacketed" in how they are expected to react.

However, this does not mean a complainant's post-incident conduct has no probative value, especially when it is inconsistent with other parts of her testimony.

The court also noted that the woman gave Panfilov her home address so he could book her a car, and replied to his message checking that she got home safely.

It said these were not explicable.

The court declined to place weight on a roughly 40-second CCTV clip of the woman walking out of the lift, saying it was not enough to help decide her credibility either way.

Judge had erred in finding the woman's evidence "unusually convincing"

The court said the unresolved inconsistencies gave reason to doubt her account that the encounter on Jan. 12, 2021 was non-consensual and violent.

"We did not think that the complainant met the threshold of being an "unusually convincing" witness and a reasonable doubt arose within the prosecution’s case," it said.

The court added that neither the woman's account nor Panfilov's could be said to be more believable than the other.

"In such a situation, the court could only be guided by the "cornerstone of our criminal jurisprudence" that, where the evidence may lead to two equally reasonable results, that suffices to establish reasonable doubt."