Singapore’s death penalty clemency never fades Malaysians from the injustice case of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam.
In a recent update, it seems to have another three Malaysians condemned to death row for falling into the wrong crowd or making a miserable life mistake.
According to FMT, Datchinamurthy Kataiah, Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, and Saminathan Selvaraju are among the three Malaysians on death row in Singapore for drug trafficking and will have their appeals heard at the republic’s appellate court today (20 January 2023).
Datchinamurthy was scheduled to be executed last year. However, he managed to obtain a stay of execution from the Singapore High Court at the 11th hour pending his legal suit against the Singapore government over his death sentence. He was charged with smuggling 44.96g of diamorphine into Singapore in 2011 and sentenced to death in 2015.
Pannir was charged in Singapore for trafficking heroin in 2017 while Saminathan was charged with trafficking diamorphine with two others in 2013.
A fourth Malaysian, Gobi Avedian, who was convicted of drug offenses but was not handed the death sentence will also be appealing his case.
FMT also reported that Gobi was arrested on 11 December 2014, at the Woodlands Checkpoint and subsequently handed a capital charge of importing 40.22g of heroin but a High Court judge acquitted him of the capital charge and reduced it to one of attempted drug importation in 2017. Gobi is now facing a 15-year jail sentence and 10 strokes of the cane, with the sentence, backdated to the date of his remand.
The last Malaysian to be executed in Singapore for drugs was Kalwant Singh. He was hanged in July. Kalwant was convicted in June 2016 of possessing 60.15g of diamorphine and trafficking 120.9g of the drug in the city-state.
Source: (1)
