SINGAPORE: A police officer whose wife and mother-in-law fatally assaulted a young Myanmar maid went on trial on Thursday (Jul 20) for his alleged role in the abuse and cover-up of the offences.
Staff Sergeant Kevin Chelvam, who has been suspended from the Singapore Police Force, faces four charges related to the case involving 24-year-old victim Piang Ngaih Don.
The 44-year-old is accused of abetting his wife in starving the maid, who was usually only given slices of bread soaked in water at irregular intervals.
He is also contesting charges of hurting the maid by lifting her off the ground by her hair, removing evidence and lying to the police.
According to the prosecution’s case, Chelvam was the victim’s employer and was “fully aware of the atrocities that occurred under his roof”.
Deputy Public Prosecutors Stephanie Koh and Sean Teh said Chelvam was “complicit” in the offences by “his conscious indifference to the deceased’s plight, which he allowed to continue unabated until her death”.
THE PROSECUTION’S CASE
Chelvam lived with his wife and their two children – then aged four and one – in a three-bedroom flat in Bishan. Two tenants lived in one of the bedrooms, said the prosecution.
Chelvam’s mother-in-law and co-accused, Prema S Naraynasamy, had her own home but would often stay over to help cook and take care of the children.
The prosecution said the victim began working for the household in late May 2015. It was her first time working outside of Myanmar.
Chelvam signed the employment contract, agreeing to provide the maid with at least three adequate meals a day, among other terms.
The victim was tasked with completing household chores and looking after the children, and was mainly under the supervision of Chelvan’s wife Gaiyathiri Murugayan. However, Chelvam saw and interacted with the maid whenever he was home, said the prosecutors.
He kept in contact with his wife via WhatsApp throughout the day, discussing household matters, He could also monitor what was going on at home in real-time via a phone app linked to the six closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the flat.
The prosecution said Chelvam noticed the “drastic drop” in the victim’s weight. She was 39kg when she first started working for the family and weighed only 24kg when she died 14 months later.
Prosecutors will use WhatsApp messages between Chelvam and his wife to show that he “endorsed the use of deprivation of food as a form of punishment”.
They will call a forensic pathologist to the stand, who will testify that the victim was in a poor nutritional state when she died, with an emaciated body and her muscles “wasted and somewhat pale and translucent”.
If the starvation persisted, it would have affected her consciousness, prevent her from being up and about and lead to progressive multi-organ failure and eventually death.
In one message to his wife, Chelvam allegedly said he had threatened to starve the victim: “(The victim) never put the children photo at the hall properly again … I told her that if one more time she do the same no food for her the whole day…”
After the victim died, Chelvam allegedly attempted to thwart investigations by preventing the police from obtaining crucial footage by disconnecting the CCTV recorder and lying about its whereabouts.
He knew that the victim was regularly abused by his wife and mother-in-law, and that her physical condition had deteriorated, charged the prosecution in their opening statement.
Chelvam is also accused of lying to the police that the CCTV recorder had been removed six months earlier at a tenant’s request. While he was at the house with the police on the day the victim’s death was discovered, Chelvam allegedly pretended to search the house for the recorder, before claiming he was not able to find it.
Chelvam is accused of assaulting the victim on one occasion in early August 2016. CCTV footage showed him grabbing the victim by the hair and lifting her off the ground from a sitting position. He later said he was irritated at her for falling asleep while eating.