SINGAPORE: A woman who joined her daughter in abusing a young maid until she died has admitted to asking her son-in-law to remove a closed-circuit television recorder that held evidence of the crimes.
Prema S Naraynasamy, 64, pleaded guilty on Thursday (Jun 15) to one count of instigating her son-in-law, 44-year-old Kevin Chelvam, to cause evidence of the offences to disappear.
Prema is currently serving a 14-year jail sentence for her role in the abuse of Myanmar national Piang Ngaih Don, who died aged 24.
The judge said she needed more time to consider the sentencing and adjourned the case to a later date.
THE CASE
The victim, Ms Piang Ngaih Don, had died of a brain injury with severe blunt trauma to her neck on Jul 26, 2016, after 14 months of repeated abuse.
She was punched, stamped on and starved until she weighed only 24kg. She was also tied to a window grille at night in the days before her death and assaulted if she tried to rummage for food in the dustbin.
The court heard that Prema had been assaulting the victim on the night of Jul 25, 2016, with her daughter and co-accused, 43-year-old Gaiyathiri Murugayan.
After refusing the maid her dinner, Gaiyathiri tied the victim’s wrist forcefully to a window grille and kicked her in the stomach before leaving her on the floor in wet clothes.
The victim did not rouse after this. When the two abusers realised this, they tried multiple ways to wake her, to no avail.
They called for a doctor to make a house call, refusing to call for an ambulance or the police.
When the doctor arrived and realised the victim was dead, she insisted on calling the police and for an ambulance.
GAIYATHIRI CALLS HUSBAND
At this point, Gaiyathiri called her husband, a police officer. He arrived shortly after.
The prosecution said Prema had reason to believe that she and or her daughter had caused the victim’s death by repeatedly assaulting her in the past two days.
She also knew that their actions had been captured by CCTV cameras in the house and did not want police to get hold of the footage.
She spoke to Chelvam in a bedroom and directed him to dismantle the CCTV recorder from its power source so that it could be disposed of.
According to the prosecution, Chelvam was initially reluctant to do so, but allegedly proceeded on Prema’s insistence and handed the device to her.
A police officer on the case asked Chelvam to produce the CCTV footage later that day, but Chelvam allegedly lied that there was no footage.
He purportedly claimed that the recorder had been removed months ago and was stored in a bedroom. The officer asked him to find it, and he pretended to search for it before saying he could not.
While the police were still at the house, Prema’s daughter-in-law arrived with a handbag. Prema slipped the CCTV recorder into her bag without her daughter-in-law’s knowledge.
She then told her in Tamil: “I have kept something in your bag, do something with it.”
The daughter-in-law later left and went home with her husband. She then gave her husband the recorder and told her what Prema, her husband’s mother, had said.
Prema’s son then called a friend and asked her to keep something for him, requesting that she not ask for any details.
His friend agreed and took the CCTV recorder from him, not knowing what its relevance to police investigations was.
Police officers later went to the home of Prema’s son and daughter-in-law and asked for the CCTV recorder. Prema’s son got his friend to return the item, and the police took it.
The prosecution asked for at least three years’ jail for Prema, while defence lawyer Rai Satish asked for between 18 and 24 months’ jail instead.
The prosecutor said this case flows from “one of the most horrific cases of physical and psychological abuse of a domestic helper which culminated in her death”.
He urged the court not to give weight to her plea of guilt as the evidence was “overwhelming” in this “grave and heinous case”.
Gaiyathiri was sentenced to 30 years’ jail in 2021 for her involvement. She appealed against her sentence, but it was dismissed a year later.
Chelvam’s case is pending. He is set to claim trial to all his charges, which include maid abuse offences against the same victim, the court heard.
He has been suspended from the police force since August 2016, days after the maid died.