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nagaenthran Dharmalingam

Singapore — Despite his execution date being less than a day away, the execution of a Malaysian drug trafficker was stayed on Tuesday (Nov 9) by the Court of Appeal, after he tested positive for COVID-19.

On Monday (Nov 8) night, a High Court judge dismissed a last-minute court application against the death sentence of 33-year-old Nagaenthran Dharmalingam. His lawyer M Ravi filed a court application before Justice See Kee Oon, which was heard in chambers and without access to the media.

Mr Ravi’s application was based on Nagaenthran purportedly possessing the mental age of someone below 18, Justice See said in his oral remarks. Mr Ravi argued that judicial mercy should be exercised to grant Nagaenthran a reprieve from the execution of the death sentence and that further psychiatric examinations should be conducted on his mental state.

In his remarks, Justice See said that “there is no credible basis” for Mr Ravi’s assertions for Nagaenthran’s mental age and noted that Nagaenthran was found by the trial judge not to be suffering from any degree of intellectual disability, even though it was accepted that he had borderline intellectual functioning.