An Indonesian maid had consensual sex with her employer's 70-year-old father-in-law but later lied to the police, accusing the elderly man of rape after he refused to hand her $3,000.

Yesterday, Dina Melina, 32, was jailed for three months on one count of giving false information to a police officer. She pleaded guilty on Tuesday.

A second charge of lying to another police officer, when she accused the man of molesting her, was taken into consideration during sentencing.

The court heard that Dina first met the man at the Indonesian Embassy some time in 2011 or 2012 and she interacted with his family members.

She later agreed to become his daughter-in-law's maid and started working at her Jurong West Street 61 flat in 2013.

The man does not live there but would interact with Dina whenever he dropped by every three to four months.

In December 2016, she asked him for a loan and he gave her $1,000. Unable to repay, she asked him "if there was anything else he wanted in return".

The man then asked if they could have sexual intercourse and she agreed. They had consensual sex in the flat last April.

The court heard that Dina felt that she was underpaid and decided to ask the man for more money.

Shortly after the initial sexual encounter, she told him that she needed money for a medical examination and he loaned her another $1,000.

When she was unable to repay him again, he asked to touch her breast and she allowed him to do so on May 4 last year.

Dina then tried another ploy to obtain more cash from him.

She pretended to be the man's daughter-in-law and sent him text messages claiming that the woman knew what he had done.

The maid also threatened to spread this information unless the man handed over $3,000 to his daughter-in-law. But he was told that the money should first be handed to Dina.

The man saw through the ruse and refused to meet the demand.

Unhappy that her plans had been foiled, the maid lodged a police report on June 8 last year, accusing the man of rape.

Police subsequently recorded two statements from him in June and July last year.

Dina, who did not engage a lawyer, came clean only on Sept 29 last year after a lie-detector test.

Delivering his sentence yesterday, District Judge Marvin Bay said that Dina had sought to implicate the man with the extremely grave offence of rape.

He said : "The types of harm applicable in this genre of case that may ensue can include loss of liberty, by causing another to be unjustifiably arrested and harm arising from the wastage of public investigative resources."