Three men involved in the Orchard Towers murder had their charges reduced on Thursday (July 11).
Three out of the seven accused were granted a discharge amounting to an acquittal on the charge of murder.
Loo Boon Chong, 25, Chan Jia Xing, 26, and Tan Hong Sheng, 22 were charged a week ago, after the alleged murder incident which took place last Tuesday (July 2).
Four out of the seven were also brought back to the crime scene earlier this week on Tuesday (July 9).
Instead of murder charges, the three men now face one charge of consorting with a person carrying an offensive weapon in a public place, under the Corrosive and Explosive Substances and Offensive Weapons Act.
According to court documents, they were allegedly found in the company of Tan Sen Yang, 27, who supposedly had a foldable “kerambit” knife in his possession at the Naughty Girl Club on the second storey of Orchard Towers at 5.46am on July 2.
The weapon is a curved knife resembling a claw.
Four others involved are still facing murder charges and no bail was offered to them.
Tan and Chan were each offered bail of S$25,000 while Loo’s bail was set at S$15,000. The trio will be back in court on Aug 1.
The accused were all brought back to the crime scene to supposedly re-enact the event. The four were taken to the first-storey entrance of the building and a club on the second floor, presumably Naughty Girl, where an argument between the victim and accused had purportedly taken place.
During the process of investigations the seven accused persons will be held at the Central Police Division. They will not be allowed bail because of the capital charge they face, and after a three-week psychiatric evaluation, they will be held at Changi Prison.
They allegedly killed 31-year old Satheesh Noel Gobidass.
On the day of the incident, the victim collapsed near an escalator in the building and was found lying motionless in a pool of blood. Members of the public attended to his injuries.
The police were alerted at 6.25am, when the victim was sent to Tan Tock Seng Hospital unconscious and pronounced dead an hour later. /TISG
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