A last-minute stay of execution has been granted to Malaysian national Datchinamurthy Kataiah, less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to be hanged.
Datchinamurthy, 36, represented himself before the High Court on Thursday morning, Apr 28. He has an ongoing prison correspondence misconduct legal challenge that is scheduled to be heard on May 20, wrote his former lawyer, Ravi M Ravi, in a Facebook post, adding “The question before the court is can they hang him this Friday when he has a hearing date fixed on the case to be heard on 20th May.”
In his next post, Mr Ravi announced that the stay of execution had been granted. “This underscores the importance of exhausting the legal process and trying till the end and not giving up.”
After the High Court’s decision, the Attorney-General’s Chambers filed an appeal against it, which was immediately heard by the Court of Appeal.
The Court dismissed the appeal, however, and maintained the stay of execution.
This morn Datchinamurthy was granted a stay of execution by d highcourt. Spore AG rushed an appeal to d CA, which was heard w astonishing speed 2:30pm today! However CoA dismissed d AG’s appeal- stay order maintained! #savedatch
— Lawyers for Liberty (@lawyers4liberty) April 28, 2022
Malaysian lawyer N Surendran also tweeted about the stay of execution
Datchinamurty Kataiah has been granted a stay of execution by a Spore High crt judge! There will be no execution 2moro morn. Datchina argued d case himself as no Spore lawyer dared to represent 4 fear of reprisal from d State
— N.Surendran (@nsurendrann) April 28, 2022
Datchinamurthy had occupied a neighbouring cell to Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, who was executed on Wednesday morning (Apr 27), despite global and local calls for his pardon.
Nagaenthran, also a Malaysian national, was 34 when he was executed and had been on death row for a dozen years. He was said to have had an IQ of 69 as well as intellectual disabilities.
In 2015, Datchinamurthy, also a Malaysian national, was sentenced to hang after having been found guilty of smuggling 44.96gm of diamorphine into Singapore in 2011.
He claimed at that time that a man named “Rajah” had asked him to bring Chinese medicine into Singapore.
His family was informed that he was set to be executed last week, on Apr 21.
He filed for an eleventh-hour judicial review to prohibit the scheduled execution based on his pending legal challenge.
On Monday night, a candlelight vigil at Hong Lim Park was held for Nagaenthran and Datchinamurthy.
On March 30, Singapore carried out its first execution in more than two years. Abdul Kahar bin Othman, 68, had been convicted on two charges of trafficking diamorphine in 2013 and given the death penalty two years later. /TISG
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