The Best I Could (18 page)

Ng’s wife approached me to defend him. She was later charged for assaulting the maid and sentenced to a few months in jail. I represented her too. Ng’s charge was reduced to one of culpable homicide under Section 304(a) of the Penal Code because the prosecution agreed with us that it would be difficult to prove murder. I agreed that my client would plead guilty to the reduced charge. It was the most horrendous assault I have come across where a maid is concerned. It must have been a living hell for her. When I looked at the autopsy report, I felt sick. How could one human being be so evil to another? I suppressed my emotions and decided as usual that I would do the best for him as it was my job to do so.

Negotiations were difficult because of the nature of the injuries and the way they were inflicted. Finally, we reached an agreement and I persuaded Ng to accept the offer of the prosecution. Justice Choo Han Teck heard our mitigation and the prosecution address on sentence. He agreed with us that in this case, life imprisonment would be excessive and since he was in a position to give more than 10 years because of the multiple charges, he agreed with me that he could give more than 10 years but less than life—a total of 18 years.

If I’m not mistaken, Ng came to court to testify for his wife. He said that he was to be blamed for everything that had happened to the maid and that he was a monster. He found religion in prison and hopefully his new-found faith will make it easier for him to live with what he has done. He had an infant daughter whom he loved very much, so I cannot understand how a person who can love so deeply can behave so barbarically.

One final case that I want to highlight in this chapter involves another man who behaved very badly. Vidya Shankar Aiyar was labelled a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and it appeared an apt description. He was a well-known, amiable face in Singapore media circles, fronting the blue-ribbon business news programme ‘In Conversation’ on Channel NewsAsia. It was a job everyone agreed he did very well.

But Aiyar, an Indian national, got randy on November 2, 2002, at a colleague’s housewarming party at Holland Village. He took a girl home from the party to his Lorong Chuan apartment and outraged her modesty. According to his 30-year-old victim, who was never named in public, she woke up the next morning feeling flesh pressing against the back of her body. She was naked in his bed and being spooned by Aiyar’s naked body. She repeatedly asked him, “Why am I naked?” and “Where are my clothes?” Aiyar claimed at the trial that the woman was tipsy and had welcomed his advances. He said he had taken her clothes off because she said she was hot and also because she had vomited. Fighting her anger, the woman dressed up and stormed out of Aiyar’s apartment at around 6.20 am. Aiyar followed her to the main road where she hailed a taxi and went home.

It was a classic case of one person’s word against another’s. But the case against Aiyar was strongly supported by a statement from the taxi driver who had taken the two of them to Lorong Chuan the night before. Eric Tey was initially dismissed by police as being immaterial to the case against the 37-year-old Indian. But the victim’s father tracked him down and Tey became a key witness in the trial. The taxi driver noted that the victim had asked him to take her home first when they got into the taxi near Holland Village, but Aiyar had insisted on going to Lorong Chuan first. He had heard Aiyar telling the woman: “Let’s go to Lorong Chuan. When you are sober, I will send you back.” She apparently threw up once during the ride, putting her head outside the window, and passed out after that. Tey also heard Aiyar say: “I’m not going to bed a drunk.”

Aiyar’s trial started in September 2003 and lasted three months. It captured the imagination of the public mainly because Aiyar was a media personality and had interviewed industry leaders and prime ministers. Scandals involving media personalities are rare in Singapore. When one erupts, it’s bound to be closely covered by the media and followed by the public. It perhaps also helped that Aiyar was a foreign national and didn’t have a particularly deep network of friends, family and contacts in Singapore. Even other prominent criminal lawyers like Choo Si Sen, Peter Fernando and Kertar Singh were curious onlookers at this case. The victim turned up in court everyday even though she did not have to and had already given evidence. But she was not present when the judge’s verdict was read out on December 30, 2005.

It was quite clear that District Judge Victor Yeo took great satisfaction in chastising Aiyar and sending him to jail. He did not mince his words as he handed down the guilty verdict. He described Aiyar as deceitful, crafty, unreliable, pretentious, cunning, evasive and absurd. Aiyar bowed his head a few times as the judgement was read. On January 6, 2006, Aiyar was sentenced to 15 months in jail and four strokes of the cane. He managed to escape the caning because of health reasons. He served his time without further incident and is now back in India working for the media.

Shankar Aiyar’s family gave him full moral support. But in the process of doing so, they acted like royalty. His elder sister from the Middle East told me that the courts should be very careful before they convict her brother because Singapore needs India more than India needs Singapore. I then asked her whether the whole of India was supporting her brother and whether there could be a political disaster. She didn’t reply, perhaps realising the farcical nature of her words.

I was not Aiyar’s original lawyer. He was first represented by Shashi Nathan, a partner from the firm I was with at the time. Even before Aiyar was charged, the whole office knew he was in trouble. As a famous personality, anything about him was news. After the initial court appearances, Shashi Nathan was removed. Aiyar and his family wanted me to represent him and I was told specifically to get any assistant except Shashi. Of course I chose my usual assistant then, my wife’s nephew Anand Nalachandran.

The family decided not to appeal the long-winded and sometimes unnecessarily harsh judgment of District Judge Yeo. But we made an appeal to the President to take away the caning on medical grounds and it was accepted. Shankar served 10 months in prison (with remission for good behaviour). On the day of his release, he was taken to an immigration department holding centre from where he was sent to the airport and back to India.

Neither he nor his family called me after his departure. I think they were upset that I insisted on my full fees. I didn’t consider it an honour or a privilege to defend Aiyar that I had to reduce my fees, especially as the family had been quick to let everyone know how wealthy they were.

I believe the case jolted many men who have been in similar situations as Aiyar. Unfortunately, it’s not an unusual situation. The Aiyar case was a good reminder that men should think twice before taking advantage of a woman who is intoxicated. I should also say that, during the course of the trial, Aiyar applied for permission to leave the jurisdiction of the country to go to India. Leave was granted and people were taking bets as to whether he would return. When he returned, both the deputy public prosecutor and I were surprised as we thought that he would not come back. Extradition would have been difficult with his political connections as his uncle was a minister in India’s central government. Sometimes, I wonder whether he would have returned if he knew he would be convicted and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment with caning.

Whenever a child dies, emotions run high, and so it was that the death of four-year-old Sindee Neo generated a lot of anger, despair and frustration. The public could not comprehend how former SIA stewardess, Constance Chee Cheong Hin, could cause a child to fall from a block of flats on October 7, 2004.

It all started with an unlikely love affair between Chee, a university drop-out and Sindee’s father, Neo Eng Tong, who was running a
karang guni
(rag-and-bone) business at the time. He said he first met her when he approached her at her doorstep asking if she had any unwanted household items for sale. From then they chatted and became acquainted.

Being a married man with a child, Neo was cagey about these facts at the hearing. He said Chee would stay with him overnight in his Telok Blangah Crescent flat when his Thai wife, Kittiduangrat Ketkanok, who worked as a hawker’s assistant, and their daughter Sindee were away in Bangkok. He also said that during the affair, Chee lent him about $40,000 to start a business but he gambled it away. Chee said in court that she had actually lent him $50,000. He never paid back what he borrowed and broke off their affair in July that year. But Chee continued to demand for her money after that. She would call him often on his mobile phone and turn up at his doorstep unexpectedly. Neo said she would create a scene outside his flat when he refused to let her in. “She would knock on the window, knock on the door and shout that she knew I was at home,” he said.

Things came to a head on October 3, 2004. Between 8.00 pm and 9.00 pm that day, Chee called him on his mobile phone while hiding behind a wall outside his bedroom window. Spotting Chee outside, Neo hid Sindee behind the bedroom door as Chee tried to barge into the flat. Neo’s tenant, Joseph Wong Tai Fatt, failed to keep her out. She had a quarrel with Wong in the living room but fled when she saw Madam Kittiduangrat returning home. Over the next few days, Chee must have thought about what she could do to get back at Neo and also how she could get her money back.

On October 7, she entered Neo’s unlocked flat at 4.30 am and kidnapped the sleeping Sindee. Less than 15 minutes later, Sindee plummeted down the block. Just before the girl fell, her parents, who had discovered almost immediately that she was missing and had been frantically looking for her at the foot of the block, heard her screams pierce through the night from the upper floors. Sindee’s fall was broken by an awning, but she still suffered a fractured jaw and serious head injuries. She died five days later in the Singapore General Hospital.

Chee was accused of kidnapping Sindee and causing her death. Neo said he had seen Chee walking away from the scene and told his wife to apprehend her. He had recognised Chee even though she was wearing a wig. Caught by Madam Kittiduangrat and Wong, Chee was handed over to the police. In her statement, Chee said: “Who in the right sense of mind would want to throw somebody down, what’s more a child?” This was the question that reverberated around Singapore.

The court was packed on October 10, 2005, for Chee’s trial which began more than a year after Sindee’s abduction. On the advice of High Court judge, V K Rajah, the prosecution rephrased the culpable homicide charge against Chee. Instead of accusing her of causing Sindee’s death by throwing her down a block of flats, it alleged that Chee had intentionally caused the child to fall from a floor at the block of flats. Which floor it was could not be accurately determined despite tests by forensic teams. When the case was adjourned for the day, an emotional Madam Kittiduangrat hurled insults at Chee in Hokkien and Thai. There continued to be an undercurrent of strong emotions during the proceedings.

The defence team was angry at one of the expert witnesses for the prosecution, Dr Tay Ming Kiong, who was Head of the Criminalistics Laboratory of the Health Sciences Authority. We nicknamed him “The Pig” because he used pork in his experiments to decide whether Chee had thrown the child. Three bags of pork—weighing 25 kg in total and packed in three jointed sections to represent the head and neck, torso and arms, and lower limbs—were used to simulate the child’s weight and body. A policewoman about the size and height of Chee was then deployed to first tip and then throw the bags down the block. The experiments were conducted from the fourth, sixth and tenth floors of the block to find out if the bags would land in the vicinity where Sindee had landed. Dr Tay concluded from his experiments that Sindee was not tipped but thrown. But I felt otherwise and so did our expert whose evidence was rejected by the judge.

On January 24, 2006, Justice Rajah found Chee guilty of two charges: culpable homicide and kidnapping. But he reserved judgment after the prosecution’s forensic psychiatrist, Dr Stephen Phang, raised several issues about Chee’s mental health. Dr Phang told the court that Chee, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, had in the previous two months rejected suggestions she was mentally ill and refused treatment. Dr Phang said: “For all cases of schizophrenia, it is said that one-third will be cured, one-third will have relapses and be in and out of hospital, and another one-third will have a downward slide. Chee falls in the last category.” He was convinced that Chee should be locked away for a long time, like life imprisonment. But Chee told me that Dr Phang did not like her because she asked him too many questions that he could not answer. I found Dr Phang a very officious psychiatrist and was worried that his opinion might sway Justice Rajah to impose life imprisonment. Thankfully, the judge went against established mode of sentencing and, on April 7, 2006, imposed a 10-year sentence on Chee for culpable homicide as well as another three years for the kidnapping of Sindee. Justice V K Rajah showed that he was a courageous judge who knew the meaning of compassion. In the relatively short time he sat as a trial judge, he earned the respect of the whole Bar, especially the Criminal Bar.

Chee claimed that she knew my late brother, Surash, well. According to her, Surash was the only person who remembered her birthday and once, when they were overseas, he went to her room with a cake and conveyed his best wishes. I thought that was typical of Surash. Hers was a case of a woman who literally flew very high and came crashing down to earth fast. When I first saw her in prison, I could see that she must have been attractive once. She was teasing me when we first met, asking me whether I was as good as people said I was. I just smiled. She gave funny answers to questions I asked and it took some time to get information from her. She got along very well with my nephew, Sunil Sudheesan, who was assisting me. I didn’t find it unusual when she told me that I made her nervous.