SINGAPORE - A Singaporean who poured hot water on her maid's back and forced her to sleep among a group of dogs has been sentenced to 10 months' jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday.

Brenda Tan Bee Khim, 40, a housewife, was sentenced Wednesday for the 2006 attack on the maid identified as Tasiyem, The Straits Times reported.

Court officials could not immediately be reached to comment.

Four days after the incident, which left the maid with second-degree burns on her neck and back, Tan tried to hide her crime by sending Tasiyem back to Indonesia, the report said.

"It is fortunate that the indignant family and friends of the maid in Indonesia have had the good sense to do all that was necessary to bring the accused to justice and to expose her foul deed," the newspaper quoted Isaac Tan, the prosecutor, as saying.

During the trial before Judge Loo Ngan Chor, Tasiyem testified that she was made to sleep alongside dogs on the balcony of Tan's apartment, the report said.

Muslims, who make up most of Indonesia's population, consider dogs to be unclean.

Advocacy groups say about 170,000 migrant women, many of them from Indonesia and the Philippines, work as domestic helpers in Singapore, where cases of employers abusing their maids appear often in the local media.

The Ministry of Manpower has said that 90 percent of maids are happy working in the city-state.